Jaciw, Andrew P.; Zacamy, Jenna; D'Apice, Hannah; Lin, Li; Kwong, Connie; Schellinger, Adam M. (2019). Empirical Education Inc. Retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED603235
Reviewed: February 2022
This review may not reflect the full body of research evidence for this intervention.
Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
End of unit Biology Assessment (researcher-developed) |
Enhanced Units (EU) vs. Business as usual |
0 Months |
Full sample (grades 9-12);
|
71.00 |
70.77 |
No |
-- |
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Biology and U.S. History Combined |
Enhanced Units (EU) vs. Business as usual |
0 Months |
Full sample (grades 9-12);
|
65.65 |
62.66 |
No |
-- |
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
End of unit US History Assessment (researcher-developed) |
Enhanced Units (EU) vs. Business as usual |
0 Months |
Full sample (grade 11);
|
56.51 |
49.39 |
Yes |
-- |
|
Characteristics of study sample as reported by study author.
| Asian | 17% | |
| Black | 12% | |
| Native American | 0% | |
| Other or unknown | 17% | |
| Pacific Islander | 1% | |
| White | 53% |
| Hispanic | 12% |
The program included a pilot study and a field test in two consecutive years. The field test is the focus of this study. The study included five schools, three in Virginia and two in California. The schools according to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) designations were: 20% rural, 20% town, 40% suburban, and 20% urban. The focus of the study was high school biology and U.S. history classes.
The student sample was 52.4% White, 12.2% Black, 12.4% Hispanic, 17.2% Asian, 0.5% Pacific Islander, 0.2% American Indian/Native Alaskan, and 5% multi-racial/unknown. Eight percent were English learners, 11.7% students had Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), and 32.9% were from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.
Enhanced Units (EU) is an intervention which aims to integrate research-based content enhancement routines with technological enhancements to improve student content learning and higher order reasoning, especially for students with disabilities or other learning challenges. The routines are based on the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM) and consist of unit organizers, question/exploration guides, cause and effect guides, and comparison (compare and contrast) tables. The technology developed during the grant to use with the routines is a Google application called CORGI, which stands for Co-organize your learning. Several student supports are built into the application including embedded videos about how to use the routines, models of expert examples, text to speech and speech to text, and support for vocabulary and translation. The combination of the routines and CORGI technology is therefore called EU. This EU project is the first to combine multiple research-based routines and technology as a means of teaching higher-order reasoning to secondary students.
Students in the comparison condition received business as usual instruction from the same teachers that delivered the intervention. Teacher professional development emphasized the importance of not using EU materials in control classrooms.
No implementation support was described separate from the intervention components, which included curricular materials, professional development, and coaching.
Reviewed: June 2021
This review may not reflect the full body of research evidence for this intervention.
Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.
|
Outcome measure |
Comparison | Period | Sample |
Intervention mean |
Comparison mean |
Significant? |
Improvement index |
Evidence tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Biology and U.S. History Combined |
Enhanced Units (EU) vs. Business as usual |
0 Days |
Full sample;
|
65.65 |
62.66 |
No |
-- | |
|
Biology and U.S. History Combined |
Enhanced Units (EU) vs. Business as usual |
0 Days |
Full sample;
|
65.65 |
62.66 |
No |
-- |
Characteristics of study sample as reported by study author.
| Asian | 17% | |
| Black | 12% | |
| Native American | 0% | |
| Other or unknown | 18% | |
| Pacific Islander | 1% | |
| White | 52% |
| Hispanic | 12% | |
| Not Hispanic or Latino | 88% |
The study was conducted across three districts in five schools located in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Three schools were in Virginia, and two schools were in California. Thirteen teachers who taught biology and U.S. history courses participated in the study.
Twenty percent of schools were located in rural, town, and city/suburban areas, respectively, and 40% in suburban areas. White students comprised more than half the sample (52%) and Asians comprised 17% of the sample. The composition of Black and Hispanic students were similar (12%). Pacific Islander and American Indians/Native Alaskans comprised 0.5% and 0.2%, respectively. A small percentage of students in the sample reported being multi-racial or did not report their ethnicity (5%).
Enhanced Units (EU) is a professional development intervention for teachers of secondary U.S. history and biology classes. The goal of EU is to integrate research-based content enhancement routines with technological enhancements to improve student content learning and higher order reasoning. Four routines used in this study were developed to provide ways to graphically highlight critical content, steps to follow in acquiring content, and ways to monitor progress and retention. These routines include (1) unit organizers, (2) question/exploration guides, (3) cause and effect guides, and (4) comparison (compare and contrast) tables. The technology teachers used with the routines is a Google application called Co-organize your learning (CORGI).
The U.S. history and biology teachers in the control condition delivered instruction as usual.
Teachers received approximately 3 days of professional development training on how to implement EU with CORGI in whole-class and small-group settings. Teachers also received coaching by request.
Reviewed: June 2019
This review may not reflect the full body of research evidence for this intervention.
Evidence Tier rating based solely on this study. This intervention may achieve a higher tier when combined with the full body of evidence.
An indicator of the effect of the intervention, the improvement index can be interpreted as the expected change in percentile rank for an average comparison group student if that student had received the intervention.
For more, please see the WWC Glossary entry for improvement index.
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The sample on which the analysis was conducted.
The group to which the intervention group is compared, which may include a different intervention, business as usual, or no services.
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The mean score of students in the comparison group.
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