Abstract
Educational technology is often cited as a means to improve educational outcomes and reduce costs, leading to greater quality and efficiency in learning and instruction. Yet research that attempts to assess the costs and benefits of educational technology is limited, making it difficult for educators and policy makers to make efficient decisions. This chapter reviews international research on the effectiveness, costs, and cost-effectiveness of educational technology and provides a set of core conclusions from this literature. The chapter also describes methodological challenges to assessing costs and benefits of educational technology and suggests areas for future research. The chapter concludes with lessons learned for educators and educational decision makers.
Keywords
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- 1.
Rumble (1986) offers a helpful distinction between effectiveness and efficiency: “It is possible to be effective without being efficient, but it is not possible to be efficient without also being effective. Effectiveness will depend upon the quality and quantity of the output. Efficiency will depend not only on these factors but also on the consumption of resources as an input to the system” (pp. 69–70).
- 2.
An effect size represents the difference between the means of the treatment group and the control group, which is standardized by dividing by either the pooled standard deviation or the standard deviation of the control group (Harris, 2009).
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The author would like to thank Jian Gao for excellent research assistance.
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Luschei, T.F. (2014). Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Educational Technology. In: Spector, J., Merrill, M., Elen, J., Bishop, M. (eds) Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5_19
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