Inside IES Research

It goes without saying, challenges caused by COVID-19 in the field of education remain widespread and have the potential to be long lasting. A recent report confirmed that during the pandemic the move to full-time remote schooling was related to a decrease in student achievement, especially in high-poverty districts. Now over two years later, school leaders continue to employ strategies to address learning loss, such as intensive tutoring programs. This is because decades of research support the effectiveness of in-person tutoring to accelerate learning, and recent research also shows positive effects for high dosage virtual tutoring for struggling learners during the pandemic.

While the human-to-human interaction will always be central to a quality tutoring experience, technology offers unique functionalities to enrich and extend tutoring. For example, new models of technology facilitated tutoring programs—

• Engage students with game-based and multi-media content that adjusts to the level of the individual and generate real-time tips to scaffold learning
• Employ tools such as virtual whiteboards and data visualizations to enrich the virtual workspace for the tutor and student
• Use dashboards to present real-time data driven insights for tutors to track student progress and individualize instruction
• Provide automated professional development and training opportunities to prepare tutors

Technology also enables schools and community organizations to offer remote tutoring programs at scale—to reach students anywhere and anytime, including after school and during the summer. This of course depends on student access to technology and the availability of qualified tutors.  

Four IES Supported Technology-Based Tutoring Programs

In spring 2020, to help address the crisis in education caused by the pandemic, four teams of IES-funded developers adapted and extended their learning technologies for remote tutoring to be ready to be used at scale. The technologies are all research based and offer unique capabilities to strengthen the tutoring experience and to allow programs to reach more students. Each of the following programs described below can now deliver tutoring in schools or remote settings.

A2i by Learning Ovations. A2i (watch video) is a web-based product for students in kindergarten to grade 3 that continually assesses reading and generates data-driven recommendations to inform instruction. A2i is used in hundreds of schools by tens of thousands of students each year. Originally developed for in-school use through multiple IES and other government awards, research demonstrates the efficacy of A2i to improve student reading.

At the beginning of COVID-19, the Community Literacy Support System was designed to extend A2i for tutoring at student homes and other non-school locations. The program provides customized lessons and data visualization tools for tutors and parents. In the past two years, the tutoring program has been used by 9,200 students across 5 different states, at 23 different community sites (such as this one), and within almost 8,000 homes.

ASSISTments by ASSISTments. ASSISTments (watch video) is used by teachers to assign problems to students from curricula, such as EngageNY, Illustrative Mathematics, and Open Up Resources. Students receive real-time instructional feedback while doing problems online, while teachers receive reports with actionable insights to inform instruction. Initially developed through multiple awards from IES and other sources, in 2021-22, ASSISTments was used by over 5,000 educators and 200,000 students at schools around the country. Research by SRI International demonstrated that classrooms that used ASSISTments increased in learning course content compared to a control group.

At the onset of COVID-19, ASSISTments designed TutorASSIST, a tool to present data visualizations for tutors to target specific student needs through remote (or in-person) sessions. More than 750 students across Louisiana, Georgia, and Maryland used the tool to support remote tutoring during the pandemic. With a 2021 ED/EIR grant, ASSISTments is further developing its core product and tutoring tool to serve historically underserved students, including starting a school tutoring pilot program in eight schools in partnership with EnCorps Tutors, with a focus on optimizing the technology for tutoring.

SAGA Coach by SAGA Education and Simbulus. SAGA Education and Woot Math (watch video) employ interactive and game-based activities to support student math learning and a dashboard that generates data-driven insights to promote dialogue and discussion of complex topics between teachers and students. The school-based intervention reaches approximately 75,000 students per year. Woot Math was developed through an ED/IES SBIR award and through other sources. In 2021, Woot Math was acquired by and integrated within SAGA Education’s online math program.  

During the pandemic, SAGA Coach was designed to extend Saga Education and Woot Math for remote tutoring through the addition of an interactive whiteboard shared by tutors and students, and online training materials for tutors. During the 2020-21 school year, 5,500 students used SAGA Coach for high-dosage remote tutoring, and in 2022-23, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America will use SAGA Coach to deliver a remote tutoring program.

Lightning Squad by Sirius Thinking and Success For All. Lightning Squad (watch video) is a multimedia platform where pairs of students in grades 1 to 3 who are struggling readers collaborate to read stories and play games that are presented by the computer, while a tutor provides targeted support. Developed through an ED/IES SBIR award, the product is currently being evaluated through a multiyear efficacy trial and will be used in 50 Baltimore City elementary schools in fall 2022.  

At the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, Lightning Squad was adapted for remote delivery in eight Baltimore City schools serving principally low-income students. In the remote version, tutors use a video platform (for example, Zoom) with pairs of students in their respective homes. Students proceed with the activities of the software and respond verbally while a tutor types responses on the screen in real-time for each team member to see. In the 2020-21 school year, 16 Baltimore City schools used Lightning Squad with over 800 students, most for remote tutoring. Research conducted during the project by Success For All (not yet reviewed by the Department) found that students who were able to maintain consistent participation with remote tutoring gained 1.5 years of progress as measured by their initial placement and end of year placement, double the expected gains in reading during the period of school closures.  An additional 1,200 students were served remotely using Lightning Squad in other states during this same period.

Additional Related Resources on Tutoring to Accelerate Learning

• Lightning Squad and SAGA Coach are part of Proven Tutoring, a coalition of technology-delivered tutoring programs with a mission to help educators learn about and access tutoring programs. These evidence-based programs have the potential to increase the achievement of students performing far below grade level due to COVID school closures or other factors.
• In June 2021 during the ED Games Expo, IES partnered with AmeriCorps to host a webinar focusing on government and community partner initiatives to support remote tutoring to accelerate student learning during COVID-19.

In April 2022, AmeriCorps partnered with ED to produce a webinar on lessons from the field on the topic of high-dosage tutoring. AmeriCorps and the Department, along with Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center, are partners in the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS). Launched in July 2022, the NPSS is committed to engaging 250,000 adults as tutors, mentors, and coaches in evidence-based programs designed to accelerate students’ recovery from the pandemic. 

Stay tuned to @IESResearch for news and updates on research, initiatives, and project updates in the area of tutoring to accelerate learning.

Edward Metz is a research scientist and the program manager for the Small Business Innovation Research Program at the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

Melissa Moritz was the Afterschool and Summer Learning Fellow in the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) at the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. She currently serves as the Director of Policy for the STEM Next Opportunity Fund.

Please contact Edward.Metz@ed.gov with questions or for more information.

On April 1, 2022, Google acquired the intellectual property (IP) rights for Moby.Read and SkillCheck, education technology products developed through IES programs by California-based Analytics Measures, Inc. (AMI). AMI will continue as a small business and is honoring school contracts that use Moby.Read and SkillCheck until 2024.

Moby.Read is a technology-delivered, fully automated, oral reading fluency (ORF) assessment that is self-administered by grade school students. As students read a passage aloud into a tablet, the speech-recognition software generates an assessment of ORF in real time through natural language processing software that analyzes text passages of the read-aloud performances. SkillCheck is a component of Moby.Read that employs natural language processing software to analyze recordings and produce interactive report pages that rate and illustrate the student's basic reading skills.

The technologies were developed over two decades with IES funding. Beginning in 2002, AMI designed several early prototypes to be used for ORFs as a part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress and other national assessments administered by IES’s National Center for Education Statistics. In 2016 and 2017, the IES Small Business Innovation Research program (ED/IES SBIR) funded AMI to develop and test Moby.Read to be used in schools at scale. With 2020 and 2021 ED/IES SBIR awards, AMI developed the SkillCheck as an additional component of Moby.Read to provide educators activities to inform instruction. AMI conducted research at key points over 20 years to validate the results of the assessment.

Since commercial launch in 2019, the Moby.Read and SkillCheck have been used for more than 30,000 student assessments in 30 states. Google acquired the Moby.Read and SkillCheck IP with plans to incorporate these tools into Google suite of products for education.

For additional information on the research, development, and commercialization of these technologies, see this Success Story on the ED/IES SBIR website.

Edward Metz is a research scientist and the program manager for the Small Business Innovation Research Program at the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. Please contact Edward.Metz@ed.gov with questions or for more information.

The Department of Education’s (ED) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, administered by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), funds entrepreneurial developers to create the next generation of technology products for students, teachers, and administrators in education and special education. The program, known as ED/IES SBIR, emphasizes an iterative design and development process and pilot research to test the feasibility, usability, and promise of new products to improve outcomes. The program also focuses on planning for commercialization so that the products can reach schools and end-users and be sustained over time.

In recent years, millions of students in tens of thousands of schools around the country have used technologies developed through ED/IES SBIR, including more than million students and teachers who used products for remote teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ED/IES SBIR Announces 2022 Awards

IES has made 10 2022 Phase I awards for $250,000*. During these 8 month projects, teams will develop and refine prototypes of new products and test their usability and initial feasibility. All awardees who complete a Phase I project will be eligible to apply for a Phase II award in 2023.

IES has made nine 2022 Phase II awards, which support further research and development of prototypes of education technology products that were developed under 2021 ED/IES SBIR Phase I awards. In these Phase II projects, teams will complete product development and conduct pilot studies in schools to demonstrate the usability and feasibility, fidelity of implementation, and the promise of the products to improve the intended outcomes.

IES also made one Direct to Phase II award to support the research, development, and evaluation of a new education technology product to ready an existing researcher-developed evidence-based intervention for use at scale and to plan for commercialization. The Direct to Phase II project is awarded without a prior Phase I award. All Phase II and the Direct to Phase II awards are for $1,000,000 for two-years. Across all awards, projects address different ages of students and content areas.

The list of all 2022 awards is posted here. This page will be updated with the two additional Phase I awards after the contracts are finalized.

The 2022 ED/IES SBIR awards highlight three trends that continue to emerge in the field of education technology.

Trend 1: Projects Are Employing Advanced Technologies to Personalize Learning and Generate Insights to Inform Tailored Instruction

About two-thirds of the new projects are developing software components that personalize teaching and learning, whether through artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, automated speech recognition, or algorithms. All these projects will include functionalities afforded by modern technology to personalize learning by adjusting content to the level of the individual learner, offer feedback and prompts to scaffold learning as students progress through the systems, and generate real-time actionable information for educators to track and understand student progress and adjust instruction accordingly. For example:

• Charmtech Labs and Literably are fully developing reading assessments that provide feedback to inform instruction.
• Sirius Thinking and studio:Sckaal are developing prototypes to formatively assess early grade school students in reading.
• Sown To Grow and xSEL Labs are fully developing platforms to facilitate student social and emotional assessments and provide insights to educators.
• Future Engineers is fully developing a platform for judges to provide feedback to students who enter STEM and educational challenges and contests.
• Querium and 2Sigma School are developing prototypes to support math and computer science learning respectively.
• ,Soterix is fully developing a smart walking cane and app for children with visual impairments to learn to navigate.
• Alchemie is fully developing a product to provide audio cues to blind or visually impaired students learning science.
• Star Autism Support is developing a prototype to support practitioners and parents of children with autism spectrum disorder.

Trend 2: Projects Focusing on Experiential and Hands-On Learning
Several new projects are combining hardware and software solutions to engage students through pedagogies employing game-based, hands-on, collaborative, or immersive learning:

• Pocketlab is fully developing a matchbox-sized car with a sensor to collect physical science data as middle school students play.
• GaiaXus is developing a prototype sensor used for environmental science field experiments.
• Mind Trust is a developing a virtual reality escape room for biology learning.
• Smart Girls is developing a prototype science game and accompanying real-world hands-on physical activity kits.
• Indelible Learning is developing a prototype online multi-player game about the electoral college.
• Edify is fully developing a school-based program for students to learn about, create, and play music.

Trend 3: Projects to Advance Research to Practice at Scale

Several new awards will advance existing education research-based practices into new technology products that are ready to be delivered at scale:

• INSIGHTS is fully developing a new technology-delivered version to ready an NIH- and IES-supported social and emotional intervention for use at scale.
• xSEL Labs and Charmtech Labs (noted above) are building on prior IES-funded research-based interventions to create scalable products.
• Scrible is developing an online writing platform in partnership with the National Writers Project based on prior Department of Education-funded research. 

*Note: Two additional 2022 Phase I awards are forthcoming in 2022. The contracts for these awards are delayed due to a back-up in the SAM registration process.

Stay tuned for updates on Twitter and Facebook as IES continues to support innovative forms of technology.

Edward Metz (Edward.Metz@ed.gov) is the Program Manager of the ED/IES SBIR program.

Michael Leonard (Michael.Leonard@ed.gov) is the Program Analyst of the ED/IES SBIR program.

The Department of Education’s Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR), administered by IES, provides awards for the research and development of new, commercially viable education technology products. Known as ED/IES SBIR, the program’s goal is to grow a portfolio of scalable, research-based products that address pressing needs across topic areas in education and special education.

From an education technology perspective, 2021 will surely be remembered as the “year after” the onset of the global pandemic—where demand for effective education tools and platforms skyrocketed and developers pivoted to meet the needs of the return to in-person and hybrid learning environments. Dozens of ED/IES SBIR-developers contributed to these efforts, with millions of students and educators using their products to support remote and in-person learning in 2021. This blog shares some highlights from the ED/IES SBIR program in 2021 and provides a preview of its recently released 2022 solicitations.

The ED Games Expo

IES hosted the 8^th annual ED Games Expo virtually in June 2021 to provide resources to the public in response to pandemic-related challenges. As part of the virtual Expo, 170 IES- and government-supported education technology products were available at no cost to educators and students around the country. The Expo also presented 35 virtual events for the public that have been viewed more than 10,000 times on YouTube, highlighted by a Kick Off Show introduced by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and including master classes for educators and behind-the-sciences “how to” events for students. Dates for the next ED Games Expo will be announced soon.

New ED/IES SBIR Awards

ED/IES SBIR announced 29 new 2021 awards, including 18 for prototype development and 11 for full-scale education technology product development. The awards continue trends from recent years.

One exciting trend is the employment of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, or algorithms to personalize student learning. Examples include projects by Myriad Sensors (Pocket Lab) to develop an AI engine to assess and provide feedback to students while doing physical science experiments, Analytic Measures Inc. (AMI) to create an natural language processing engine to recommend personalized practice activities based on a student’s level of oral reading fluency, and by KooApps and Kings Peak Technology to use machine learning to provide immediate vocabulary support to English learners.

Another trend in 2021 is the development of new products to scale existing IES-funded research. Projects that build on prior IES research include: Nimble Hiring to develop a platform to improve school district hiring and educator retention, xSEL Labs to create a platform for social and behavioral learning innovations, and Emberex to create a user interface with reporting and recommendation features to meet modern standards for a reading assessment.

ED/IES SBIR also continues to support projects in new areas. For example, three new projects are developing music-based technologies to support learning (Muzology, Edify, and Lyrics to Learn).

Highlights From Individual Projects in the Portfolio

Many ED/IES SBIR-supported companies enjoyed newsworthy successes in 2021.

• Through its ED/IES SBIR-developed platform, Future Engineers administered the TechRise Student Challenge and Lunabotics Junior Challenge for NASA, and an AEOP We Heart Veterans Pin Design Challenge for the Army through which more than 15,000 students participated around the country. 
• Myriad Sensors (PocketLab) hosted a series of “Science is Cool Unconferences” in 2020 and 2021 to present innovative approaches for sciences educators which were attended by more than 65,000 science educators.
• Codespark was acquired by BEGIN to support wide-scale distribution of its coding apps, including ED/IES SBIR-developed Story Mode.
• Cognitive Toybox and research partners received an award from the Gates Foundation to continue development of their early childhood assessment; they also received an investment from Morgan Stanley to grow their business.
• Muzology was recognized as a Top 10 Finisher in the 2021 Elite 200 by GSU-ASV as a top pre-seed start-up in the field of education technology.
• The Education Development Center received an IES research grant to evaluate the efficacy of Electric Funstuff’s Mission US Games, which were developed in part through ED/IES SBIR.
• ECO by Strange Loop Games reached more than 500,000 units sold in 2021.
• Inq-ITS reached the one million mark for its completed virtual labs.

ED/IES SBIR Releases Two 2022 Program Solicitations

On December 1, 2021, ED/IES SBIR released two new solicitations. Phase I solicitation #91990022R0001 is a request for proposals for $250,000 awards for 8 months for the research, development, and evaluation of new prototypes of education and special education technology products. Direct to Phase II solicitation #91990022R0002 is a request for proposals for $1,000,000 for 2 years for R&D and evaluation to develop new technology to prepare existing researcher-developed evidence-based innovations (products, interventions, practices) for use at scale, and to plan for commercialization. The goal is to support the successful transfer of research to practice at scale in education and special education. Proposals for both solicitations are due February 1, 2022.

Stay tuned for updates in 2022 on Twitter and Facebook as IES continues to support innovative forms of technology.

Edward Metz is a research scientist and the program manager for the Small Business Innovation Research Program at the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. Please contact Edward.Metz@ed.gov with questions or for more information.

This March, IES Director Mark Schneider released a blog in which he discussed exploring a partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to encourage scientists with expertise in AI and related fields to address the important post-pandemic need for accelerating learning. IES is now excited to announce our resulting participation in NSF’s National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institutes—Accelerating Research, Transforming Society, and Growing the American Workforce solicitation. In this blog, we describe this new funding opportunity, provide examples of existing NCSER-funded research in this area, and highlight the potential for such research to further improve outcomes for learners with disabilities.

 Artificial Intelligence Research Funding Opportunity

With funding from the American Rescue Plan, NCSER plans to support research under Theme 6, Track B: AI-Augmented Learning for Individuals with Disabilities. Proposals must discuss how the work will respond to the needs of learners with or at risk for a disability in an area where the COVID-19 pandemic has further widened existing gaps and/or resulted in decreased access and opportunities for students with disabilities to learn and receive support services. Please review the solicitation, the webinar (November 16), and the frequently asked questions for more information. Interested applicants should note the primary focus of this institute:

“The primary focus of an institute in AI-Augmented Learning includes research and development of AI-driven innovations to radically improve human learning and education. Achievement and opportunity gaps, particularly for learners from disadvantaged or underserved communities, have always been present, but COVID-19 has exacerbated them. Institute plans for this theme should address and measure outcomes with direct education impact, in both the short- and long- term, that have practical significance to educators, parents, or other decision-makers. Plans must also directly address algorithmic bias, model transparency, security and data privacy in the support of learning.”

Current NCSER-Funded Grants Applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Prior to the new collaboration between IES and NSF, NCSER funded several grants that apply artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches, including those described below.

With a 2018 NCSER grant, Dr. Maithilee Kunda and her team at Vanderbilt University are building on a technology-based intervention known as Betty’s Brain. This computer-based instructional program for middle school science, designed with the support of a 2006 NCER grant, allows students to teach a computer agent to understand certain concepts, increasing their own knowledge and understanding. Dr. Kunda and her team are developing a new game called Film Detective, which is designed to improve theory of mind (ToM) reasoning in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). More information about this project can be found in this IES blog.

With a 2021 NCSER grant, Dr. Patrick Kennedy and his team at University of Oregon are using machine learning to validate a well-known assessment, Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, 8^th Edition® (DIBELS 8) as a screener for dyslexia. As of 2020, 47 states require that students be screened for dyslexia in early elementary school and many states use DIBELS for this screening. However, it remains to be validated for this purpose. To address the validity of the DIBELS for screening, this research team is using machine learning approaches to predict and classify scores in relation to a pre-defined target. This will allow the research team to draw conclusions about the validity of the DIBELS 8 for dyslexia screening. These conclusions will be disseminated widely to state and local education agencies and other stakeholders.

The Potential of AI for Improving Outcomes for Learners with Disabilities

In addition to the work that IES is funding, AI has already demonstrated potential for improving outcomes for learners with disabilities in many other ways:

• AI has been used to support children with ASD who have difficulties understanding people’s emotions, with AI-driven apps and robots helping students practice emotion recognition and other social skills.
• AI has informed the development of algorithms that can help those involved in assessment identify disabilities in students, such as ASD, specific learning disabilities (dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• AI-embedded interventions have included error analysis to inform instruction and personalized feedback in spelling and math for students with disabilities.

Despite these advancements, there appear to be persistent gaps in AI research for students with disabilities, such as AI for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This is an especially important area of work because many of these learners have multiple disabilities and/or serious health conditions. For example, children with intellectual and developmental disabilities who also have hearing loss or visual impairment have compounded challenges. Some students with Down syndrome also have hearing loss and other health complications, such as cardiac issues. AI affords an opportunity to integrate health information across different applications to improve the quality of life for these students. These technological solutions can assist in managing information about the students and communicating health information between teachers, physicians, and caregivers.

AI has the potential to transform special education. We hope that this NCSER-NSF partnership will encourage researchers to be creative in planning projects that move the field of AI forward as well as provide innovative solutions to support learners with disabilities.

This blog was co-authored by Sarah Brasiel (Sarah.Brasiel@ed.gov), program officer at NCSER and Bennett Lunn (Bennett.lunn@ed.gov), Truman-Albright Fellow for NCSER and the National Center for Education Research (NCER). IES encourages special education researchers to partners with experts in Artificial Intelligence to submit to this NSF AI Institute solicitation 22-502 to increase the evidence base on use of AI for this population.