Project Activities
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Products and publications
Product: In previous research and development, the company created Sown To Grow, a product for students to complete weekly surveys and write short reflections describing their social emotional learning. In this Phase II project, the team will fully develop a component of the intervention for middle school students that uses machine-learning to categorize students' survey responses and open-ended written responses. The new component will include an educator dashboard that presents insights and themes on student answers and reflections, and provides educators suggested replies to students based on the information. The project team will also develop educator delivered mini-lessons and professional development for educators.
Project website:
Supplemental information
Video Demonstration of the Phase I Prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-MXzGHAWP8
In the Phase II project, the team will fully develop the product components, including optimizing the machine learning algorithm as more data is added to the model, upgrading the user-interface and user-experience for the students and educators, and enhancing the social and emotional learning content and curriculum. The project team will conduct iterative refinements via gathering feedback from educators and students at major production milestones until the product is fully functional. After initial development is complete, a short feasibility study will be conducted at two middle schools to gather feedback for a final development cycle. After development is complete, researchers will carry out an underpowered efficacy study to determine whether the product shows promise in improving student outcomes in social emotional learning. Researchers will implement this study across 10 middle schools, with 60 classrooms participating. Half of the classrooms will be randomly assigned the product and half will not use it. A researcher validated measure of social and emotional learning that is part of the CORE-PACE partnership will be employed to o examine differences among the students treatment and control classrooms from pre- to post-test. Qualitative data will be captured at multiple points to assess educator and student perceptions. Researchers will gather cost information using the "CostOutTool" to determine the cost per student.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
