Evidence Based Practice Application

I researched Evidence Based Practice which brought together a lot of work that is currently happening with our Instructional Technology department.  The articles were on using Evidenced Based Practice to promote and advocate for your library.  It isn’t enough to show research from the field about the importance of libraries.  Often this research is dismissed as it was conducted in another state or because the district has a different student population.  Coupling your own Evidence Based Research with current research can be very powerful. This easily applies to Instructional Technology as well.

This makes sense. We want to see research with our students and this can be the same research or highlights that can be used to promote or advocate for your program.  A take away from the readings was the importance to publicize and promote the learning that is happening in the library.  This holds true for Instructional Technology.  We know that technology and instructional programs aren’t utilized unless there is training to guided and support the practices.  In our district we are embarking on our Digital Transformation which aims to transform learning.  We have introduced the SAMR framework as a tool to gauge technology integration. In addition we have targeted the importance of Student agency, Collaborative Learning and Authentic Audience in transforming learning.  

In my department, we have been looking to identify our story and looking at ways to publicize to the district, families and the community.  I liked the final reports that included infographics to help highlight the research.  As I look at our mission statement it seems that highlighting innovative instruction utilizing components of student agency, collaborative learning, or authentic audience would be the goal.

“Mission of the instructional technology department is to support innovative instruction by building an environment of purposeful and effective technology use by educators and learners.”

This year we have been collecting data for current grants.  I now am not thinking about gathering the data for the evaluators and another item on my to do list but I am excited to pull out some of the data to highlight the work and the successes.  We have pre and post surveys which will be an easy place to begin.  I think keeping the mission statement when choosing the data and then including links to current research helps me to focus on this work.

A few challenges are that the evidence that we are collecting is for just a few specific grade levels when we support a whole school.  Time to complete this work is always a challenge.  This will have to be made a priority and built into the current work.  Setting goals and deadlines as show in Hay & Todd’s EBP Action Plan template can help.  I hope to post findings at the close of the current school year!