NCEE Blog

National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance

Sharing our Recipe: Online Training in WWC Standards

By Christopher Weiss, Senior Education Research Scientist, WWC

Many individuals and organizations have special ways of doing things, specific procedures that make them unique —Coca-Cola has its formula; sports teams have their playbooks; and grandparents have their secret recipes for biscuits, barbecue, and other family favorites.

It’s the same for the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). Our “special sauce” is in how we review effectiveness research to help determine what is working in education. But unlike Coke, coaches, and grandma, the WWC doesn’t keep it a secret.

On December 15, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) launched a set of video training modules – the WWC Group Design Standards Online Training – to share our procedures. These modules are designed to help you learn more about the elements that go into a WWC rating and the features of a research study that WWC examines during evaluation.  The online training will help education decision-makers and researchers better understand key elements of the WWC review process. These modules describe and explain key topics and concepts of the WWC’s Group Design standards and how the WWC uses these standards to identify and evaluate high quality, rigorous research.

The series is designed to address the needs of both consumers and future producers of the WWC’s reviews of educational effectiveness research. Whether you’re a researcher who’s hoping your study will meet the WWC’s standards or someone trying to make an evidence-based decision related to education, this training series will help! And no background in research is needed –we’ve also developed an extensive set of materials to support you as you learn.

Each of the five modules follows a similar structure, including an overview of module objectives, detailed information about the topic, examples, and knowledge checks to reinforce what you’ve learned. (We've embedded the first video in the series at the end of this post, but if you are going to take the training, start it through the WWC website.)  

Each module focuses on a specific aspect of the standards.

  • Group designs – or overall research designs – and the types of research that can be reviewed using the WWC Group Design Standards;
  • Attrition, or loss of participants in a research study, and why this is important;
  • Baseline Equivalence, which assesses how similar two groups are at the beginning of a research study;
  • Confounding Factors, which are study components that make it difficult or impossible to distinguish the effect of an educational intervention from the effect of that component; and
  • Outcome Measures, or what is measured to assess the effectiveness of an intervention.

If you view all five of the training modules, you will earn a certificate of completion. Details about how to view the session and earn this certificate are available on the What Works Clearinghouse website.

The online training takes about seven hours to complete, but the modules are designed so that you can complete them at your own pace. We’ve included a feature that allows you to take a break from the training at any point – then pick it up again where you left off when you’re ready to continue.

These modules cover the same material that WWC reviewers learn through their in-person certification training – and completion of the online training course is one step toward becoming a certified reviewer in WWC Group Design Standards. Certification also requires completing WWC Procedures training and successful completion of a certification exam. We expect to be able to offer online versions of the WWC Procedures training and the certification exam later in 2017.

We hope this online training brings more transparency and understanding to the WWC review process. Then we can work on that secret biscuit recipe.