Improving Teacher’s Implementation of Educational Technology at Scale by “Nudging” Teachers with Usage Information

Proving Ground conducted a field experiment with 373 teachers across two local education agencies, to examine the impact of a low-cost, teacher-focused behavioral intervention on student-level usage of educational software in K-8. Teachers in the treatment group received emails containing information on their students’ weekly usage compared to teachers in the same school; the controls received no information. Overall, these “nudges” did not increase average student usage. However, teachers below the school average increased their average student usage by 5 minutes per week (a 12% increase), while teachers above the school average decreased their usage by half as much. Our experiment provides preliminary evidence that targeted data-driven interventions can change classroom practice both initially and throughout the year assuming continual contact.