Tassomai earns an "Evidence Applied EdWARD"
Tassomai is recognised for its engagement with UCL’s EDUCATE programme and its application of research methodologies with an EdWARD.
Tassomai has earned an “Evidence Applied EdWARD” from UCL's EDUCATE programme. The EdWARD recognises that the Tassomai team have successfully applied research principles from the programme in the design and development of the product.
To qualify for the EdWARD, Tassomai had to develop and implement a research project in collaboration with the UCL team. Tassomai chose to evaluate the effect of pre-emptive didactic feedback on student knowledge recall and retention. The research found compelling evidence of the impact of this new technique in both short and long-term attainment, with interesting consequences for the future direction of the product's pedagogical design.
Tassomai Founder and CEO Murray Morrison said:
“We’re delighted to receive this award from the EDUCATE team whose input is helping us shape and develop the research function within the company. We feel a strong sense of responsibility towards our 100,000 users and their teachers, and we are determined to incorporate rigorous, evidence based research into all future product development.”
Professor Rose Luckin, the founder and Director of the EDUCATE programme said:
"We are proud that Tassomai have been part of the programme and we congratulate them on achieving their applied level EdWard, which is richly deserved."
Background information
Here’s how the research project worked in practice:
We created a series of one minute videos around particular science topics that our team identified as common problem areas of the GCSE course.
We identified students who, from our data analysis, had a high probability of struggling with a question on this topic and split them into ‘test’ and ‘control’ groups.
Before showing quiz questions on these topics we gave ‘test’ students the option to view one of our short videos.
We then measured the direct effect that viewing the video had on student attainment in the problem question (compared to the control group).
Members of both groups were then quizzed on the same material a few days later. We wanted to see whether students who watched the video did better after a period of time than those who didn’t watch a video (i.e. did the video change the “forgetting curve” by solidifying the memory?).
The results:
Our hypotheses were correct -
that immediately following the video, the chance of success for these struggling students (correctly answering the question) was markedly improve: over 70% gave correct answers compared to 26% in the control group (little better than random in the multiple choice context).
that, among those in each group who did get the question right at the start of the experiment, a student who watched a video was significantly more likely to get the question right again several days later than one who had not watched the video (i.e. our intervention content increased memory retention).
Want to find out more?
Murray gave a talk about the research project and our findings at the ASE (Association for Science Education) Conference on 09/01/19.
You can watch the talk in full here.
About EDUCATE and the EdWARDS
Based at the UCL Institute of Education, EDUCATE connects EdTech entrepreneurs, practitioners and researchers, and uses research to inspire the design of high-quality learning products and services. It helps companies like Tassomai to develop and create EdTech products that work.
The EdWards are associated with the EDUCATE programme. They are designed to celebrate and give recognition to those who successfully complete the programme, and those who make a real world impact applying its principles in the design of their EdTech products and services.