The effects of technology-enriched school intervention: a multiple case study analysis

Technology-enriched school projects are initiatives in real school settings that infuse extra computer-related resources and teacher support and training into a school and then, over a period of years, stimulate and study the school's response to the technology. Such projects have occurred in many countries. Typically the projects include a research component, but synthesizing the effects of such long-term interventions in an institution is challenging. In this study, a multiple case-study approach was used to analyse experiences from nine such technology-enriched school projects, involving six countries, 19 schools, and more than 15,000 students, to extract the dominant outcomes of such long-term interventions. In this article, a summary of the main outcomes and experiences extracted from the analysis is given. A parallel focus of the analysis is the question of methodology for research in such environments. How can the effects of technology-enriched school interventions be measured and synthesized? What aspects of the experiences can be generalized to other technology-using schools? The study addresses these issues through the framework of seven research questions relating to technology-enriched schools and responds to the questions based on the nine case studies.