EDC’s Center for Children and Technology

Program Evaluation

Laura Jeffers and her colleagues at EDC’s Center for Children and Technology (CCT) specialize in conducting evaluations of educational programs in both school and afterschool settings. Many of those programs focus on bringing science and technology activities to diverse audiences. CCT uses quantitative and qualitative methodologies to assess the effectiveness of the programs and to inform revisions and updates to the materials.

Recent examples of CCT’s afterschool work include evaluations of the following:

• The Intel Corporation’s Computer Clubhouse, a nationwide network of community-based organizations that support technology-rich exploration by young people. The program encourages young people to use various technologies to construct artifacts, explore ideas, and creatively express themselves, in collaboration with peers and local mentors. CCT evaluated the network to understand how Intel could best support an effective integration of the model in a diverse range of community-based organizations.

• The Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) Network, a collaborative effort of several museums to engage youth and their families in more creative and inventive uses of new technologies. These uses promote artistic invention and playfulness in science learning and make research-based educational technologies, and the ideas underlying them, accessible to a broad and more diverse audience.

• The Children's Aid Society's 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant, which supported and extended a variety of services and activities at afterschool programs in six community schools in New York City's District 6. CCT’s evaluation collected data about student performance on standardized tests and other measures for the grant's annual performance report and conducted qualitative evaluation research on the impact that participation in the afterschool programs on children, as perceived by parents, teachers, and the children themselves.

• The Boys & Girls Clubs of America–Project Connect Program Evaluation, funded by Microsoft and Shaquille O'Neal. The grant underwrote 14 computer labs in selected clubs around the United States. Using various methodologies, including site visits, telephone and online interview protocols, CCT examined how technology education programs manifest themselves in each club. It also identified promising practices to benefit the clubs currently planning investments in technical infrastructure.
  

For questions or comments, contact mosaic@edc.org.

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