Adaptive teaching with technology enhances lasting learning

Background
A central goal in education is to productively handle heterogeneity among students. Adaptive teaching, which integrates formative assessment, differentiation, and individual support, is a promising model for addressing student diverse prerequisites such as prior knowledge. While educational technology is increasingly employed to implement adaptive teaching, there is limited knowledge on whether its effectiveness generalizes across different subjects and educational contexts.

Aims
This study aims to investigate the immediate and long-term effects of technology-enhanced adaptive teaching on students’ cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational outcomes, and crucially, whether the effectiveness can be generalized across various educational settings. Additionally, we examined whether these effects depend on specific boundary conditions (prior knowledge, domain, degree of adaptivity).

Sample
The study involved N = 656 students from grades 7 to 12 (M = 14.91 years, 45 % female) across various subjects (k = 12 teaching units) from six different schools in Germany.

Methods
Using the Localize-Generalize-Transfer (LoGeT) framework, we adopted a comprehensive implementation approach combining co-design and ManyClasses approaches. ... mehrWe compared the effects of technology-enhanced adaptive teaching with a business-as-usual control condition, focusing on learning, monitoring accuracy, interest, and self-efficacy.

Results
We found that students in the technology-enhanced adaptive teaching condition outperformed students in the business-as-usual condition regarding delayed but not immediate learning outcomes. None of the other effects were significant. Interestingly, subject domain and the level of adaptive elements moderated the effect.

Conclusions
This research addresses a gap in understanding the generalizability of technology-enhanced adaptive teaching, demonstrating its broader applicability and contribution to lasting learning outcomes.