Strength of Research for Reasoning Mind

SRI International is a registered trademark and SRI Education is a trademark of SRI International. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Acknowledgment We thank Reasoning Mind for their support in producing this report under SRI project #21614 with a charge to seek the best evidence and report it clearly and fairly. Any opinions found within are those of the authors. evidence supporting the quality of product design relative to design characteristics that have been shown to be empirically important in prior research with other blended learning products. With regard to student and teacher attitudes, it is clear that students and teachers like using Reasoning Mind to learn mathematics and find the Genie character particularly compelling. Student engagement, observed in both behaviors and affect, also showed higher levels of concentration and on-task activity, underscoring the potential of Reasoning Mind as an online learning system that addresses these important predictors of student learning. With regard to student achievement, we reviewed four studies that should meet What Works Clearinghouse standards with reservations. Each of the studies found positive and significant effects on student achievement. These four studies occurred in a range of states and used a variety of student achievement outcome measures. Testing a product in a variety of settings and with more than one outcome measure increases the generalizability of findings. The strongest type of research study, a randomized controlled experiment, is now in progress and will contribute additional evidence in 2016. With regard to large-scale implementation, we reviewed the data from Dallas, where a Reasoning Mind implementation reached over 26,000 students. As with any digital learning product, achieving a high-quality implementation is important to obtaining results. Implementations must be planned, given adequate resources, and managed. Reasoning Mind provides clear guidelines, extensive resources, and implementation coordinators to support districts, schools, and teachers in achieving a strong implementation. The data from Dallas show that a large district can successfully implement Reasoning Mind, and the key factors in implementation include making sure students use Reasoning Mind for enough time, supporting students to progress through mathematical objectives, and helping students to obtain high accuracy in their mathematical work. School leaders should plan enough resources to support teachers in their own professional learning in order to achieve these and other specified characteristics of a high-quality implementation. The data from over 26,000 students in Dallas show that as intensity of use and quality …