The Multiple EdTech Impact Index is here
Shared impact standards in EdTech will strengthen incentives for continuous improvement and create a clearer link between evidence and decision-making
The EdTech sector is today where global industry was before the introduction of ISO 9001 in 1987: struggling with inconsistent quality practices and a lack of shared standards.
Just as ISO 9001 transformed manufacturing by unifying approaches to quality management, EdTech now needs a similar step forward for impact evaluation.
For impact evaluations to truly serve both developers and users, they must rely on consistent, transparent, and verifiable indices. Yet, today, the field of impact measurement is fragmented. In their new academic paper, researchers Kucirkova, Uppstad, Holeston, Lin, Clark-Wilson and Chigeda show how ratings and indices differ widely between providers.
The lack of unified standards has long been cited as a key reason why the impact field struggles with trustworthiness. A similar issue can be seen in ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) ratings, which assess the sustainability performance of organizations and where major ESG raters often produce widely varying results. This divergence reduces companies’ incentives to meaningfully improve their ESG practices and weakens the connection between ESG performance and asset prices.
The lack of shared impact standards in EdTech doesn’t just create noise; it weakens incentives for companies to improve their practices and clouds the link between evidence and decision-making.
We believe EdTech faces the same risk as the global industry before the introduction of ISO standards. Without consensus on how to measure impact, we will continue to see a landscape of scattered evaluations, incomparable evidence and lost opportunities for scaling what truly works.
That’s why at the International Centre for EdTech Impact, we have been working on a shared, rigorous and science-based standard for assessing EdTech impact. A standard that can unite researchers, investors, funders, and developers under a common evidence impact metric.
Our approach contributes to ongoing efforts in EdTech evaluation by synthesizing existing methodologies into a unified impact formula. We propose that such a formula is essential not only to underpin a comprehensive model of impact evaluation, but also to establish equivalences across multiple assessment frameworks currently used by EdTech certification bodies (e.g. ISTE, 1EdTech, Digital Promise, LearnPlatform by Instructure, EdTech Impact, EdTech Tulna).
Building on this need, we convened five research groups to develop a framework derived from four systematic literature reviews, encompassing five domains of impact:
Efficacy – Does the solution work?
Effectiveness – Could the solution work?
Ethics – How does the solution work?
Equity – Who does the solution work for?
Environment – Is the solution sustainable?
In their recently published paper, the Academic Advisory Board members of EduEvidence extend this “5Es” framework into a Multiple EdTech Impact Index. The Multiple EdTech Impact Index applies an integrated multi-criteria assessment methodology to identify, quantify, and aggregate the parameters of EdTech impact. EduEvidence has adopted the Index to validate and award international certification for evidence of impact in EdTech. It is the only certification that unites all other frameworks under a shared global standard. The certification scheme recognizes all types of evidence and enables companies at any stage of maturity to meaningfully demonstrate their impact.
The Index advances current approaches to EdTech evaluation by introducing a total consolidated impact score, reflecting the multifaceted nature of influence that EdTech solutions have on both learners and teachers. In their paper, published in the leading Computers & Education journal, the researchers demonstrate how these parameters can be operationalised to verifiably and consistently measure the educational impact of EdTech interventions within the K–12 sector.
Through this work, we aim to move toward a standardised, transparent and comparable model of EdTech impact assessment. All with the aim to bridge the gap between research, policy, and practice and supports more evidence-driven adoption of educational technologies. Will you join us on this journey?