4.3c

Coaches establish productive relationships with educators in order to improve instructional practice and learning outcomes. Coaches:

C. Partner with educators to evaluate the efficacy of digital learning content and tools to inform procurement decisions and adoption.

Moving into the third aspect of The Collaborate Standard, we have indicator c. We have already established trusting coaching relationships, and partnered with our mentee to identify digital content or tools that are culturally relevant while also being developmentally appropriate and targeted. Indicator c brings us to the time in which we begin to “evaluate the efficacy of digital learning content and tools”. Once we are able to look at the efficacy of what we are using, we can use that information to decide on adoption or continuation with those tools or content. 

Part of why I love this indicator is how straightforward it can be. My previous school districts had routes to go down in order to submit learning content or platforms that we felt would be helpful for our students. The technology department then took the lead and evaluated the submitted content to determine if the school district would approve it. And while this was a helpful method for a busy teacher to be able to turn over the task to another department, it wasn’t necessarily putting the educator in the role of evaluator. In order to create a starting point for the educators that I was working with to get into the mindset or evaluating efficacy on their own, I created this quick list of questions that will help a teacher while they walk through analyzing the components of evaluating a resource in attempts to adopt it: Evaluating Efficacy of Remote Learning Content and Tools. You’ll also find a great rubric created by ISTE that helps to guide in this process as well.