外网天堂

Director of Impact and Learning Design

Dr Penelope Woolf

“By combining the best in research-informed learning design and pedagogy with our extensive educational experience and expertise globally, we can design, develop, and evaluate our products and services to ensure that they deliver real impact in the most effective way possible.”

We have been very aware, over several years now, of the increasing demand for evidence around the impact that our products and services have on teaching and learning. This is backed up by with educators over the last two years through our UK and International Educational Research Forum, which included polls, a forum question, and a survey.

In a poll, the number of respondents saying that it is “very important” to have evidence about the impact of an educational resource (print or digital) before making a purchase went up from 46% in 2022 to 62% in 2023. In the survey, 63% of UK and 52% of International respondents said that “Senior Management is asking for evidence of impact”鈥攖his was up significantly from the previous year, highlighting that this need for evidence is no longer just a 鈥榥ice to have鈥�.

When we asked in our survey why they needed the evidence, the majority said that it was to “see how the product delivers against certain outcomes” and to “help to decide between different products”. One teacher highlighted why this is becoming ever more essential:

“As [education] budgets are so tight, it is really important to know that something is going to have a positive impact on outcomes before deciding to commit funds.”

At 外网天堂, we have been focusing on providing this evidence, and and learning design is an excellent example of how we are supporting our customers in ensuring that our products and services are designed and developed to maximize educational outcomes for all.

Our approach ensures that we continue to think about the impact that our products and services have on teaching and learning throughout the product lifecycle, even after launch. By undertaking impact research, we gain valuable insights and credible evidence on how our products are making a positive impact on those educational outcomes that matter most to our customers. We are unique in that our impact studies use our rigorous, bespoke Oxford Impact Framework, developed with the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and supported by the Department of Education at the University of Oxford.

Learning design involves understanding the needs of learners, the learning objectives, and then selecting the appropriate pedagogies and strategies that deliver the intended outcomes in the most effective way possible whilst improving the whole learning experience.

Resources generated by AI will typically have had very little consideration given to the design and sequencing of the content. Without this, there is no assurance that the identified educational outcomes will be met.

We recently established our learning design principles, based on educational research and grounded in professional best practice, which enable us to set out activities in a way that puts learners at the core, and ensures that knowledge is not just gained but retained. Our guides鈥攚hich have been reviewed by external experts鈥攈elp teams to choose the most appropriate pedagogies and strategies, and offer advice on practical application as well as some research insights and a glossary.

What this all boils down to is that the impact of well-designed products and services is profound: when learning design is thoughtfully implemented with teachers and learners in mind, it can lead to improved student engagement, better retention of information, and maximize educational outcomes, reinforcing our reputation as a key leader in educational content. This is why we are increasingly focusing on the science of learning design, ensuring that our educational content is not only informative but also transformative.

By combining the best in research-informed learning design and pedagogy with our extensive educational experience and expertise globally, we can design, develop, and evaluate our products and services to ensure that they deliver real impact in the most effective way possible. Our holistic approach puts us in a good position to respond to our customers鈥� needs and the changing educational landscape across the globe.

Find out more about our work at Oxford Impact .