Co-Principal Investigator: Nahum-Shani, Inbal

The purpose of this project is to conduct, evaluate, and continually refine a training program, Comprehensive Program for Adaptive Interventions Training in Education Sciences (CATIE). CATIE is designed to train education scientists in the use of sequential multiple assignment randomized trials (SMART) for constructing adaptive interventions. The project has three aims, each associated with a training component: Aim 1 is to create, maintain, and continually refine freely available online training modules and resources that education scientists can readily use to advance research and teaching on adaptive interventions in educational settings. Aim 2 is to implement an in-person training institute that provides selected scholars in the education sciences with a rigorous foundation in the design, funding, conduct, and analysis of novel experimental design methods for constructing adaptive interventions, including SMARTs. Aim 3 is to promote professional development by offering scholars guidance and mentorship before, during, and after the in-person training institute (via small group and individual meetings) to support their research plans to construct adaptive interventions in education settings. The ultimate outcome of this program is to increase the number of education researchers who can develop effective, replicable, adaptive interventions that will improve behavioral and academic outcomes in education settings.

During this project, the team will engage in the following activities:

• Continually update a dynamic website that contains publicly available products and learning materials, including (a) training modules that introduce the most recent advances in research methodologies, and (b) a new code repository for software and related resources to help education scientists construct adaptive interventions.
• Recruit, select, and support approximately 90 trainees (30 per year) total across the 3 years.
• Hold three in-person training institutes, one each year of the project, with follow-up videoconferences for participants' research teams.

The outcomes of the SMART Institute will be assessed through process-level and trainee-level outcomes. Process-level outcomes focus on the continuous improvement of the processes or activities of the training program, including assessing the maintenance of online resources (Aim 1), the implementation of the training institute (Aim 2), and the support of scholars before, during, and after the institute (Aim 3). The trainee-level outcomes focus on longer-term, indirect measures of success of the training institute on participants and other educational scientists. Training institute scholars will be surveyed via e-mail once per year for up to 2 years to determine the extent to which the program facilitated scholarly activities related to adaptive interventions. A data analytics tool will be used to track the total number of individuals who visit and use materials on the training website. Total number of grant submissions to IES that focus on adaptive interventions will also be tracked. The cost-effectiveness of the project will be examined by (a) calculating the total training cost per scholar by dividing the total cost of the training institute by the number of scholars and (b) comparing the cost per scholar relative to trainee level outcomes.

View and apply for the FY 2023 training: https://d3c.isr.umich.edu/workshops/getting-smart-comprehensive-program-for-adaptive-interventions-training-in-education-catie/

Project Website: https://d3c.isr.umich.edu/workshops

Related IES Projects: Getting SMART About Adaptive Interventions in Education (R324B180003)