Pre-emptive intervention and its effect on student attainment and retention

This paper describes how a small educational technology (edtech) company worked with academics, combining technological expertise, science content expertise, pedagogy and social research methodology to develop and evaluate the effect of video feedback on learners’ ability to answer science questions correctly. The investigation was carried out by the research team in Tassomai as part of their involvement with the EDUCATE programme. The Tassomai team worked with the research mentors in EDUCATE to find the best ways of helping students both to understand science concepts and to help them correctly answer science questions in exams. Findings indicated that, as expected, the video feedback helped learners to answer the question correctly, but also that, after a delay of around one week, a higher proportion of those students were still able to answer the question correctly compared to those in a control group of learners who did not have access to the related instructive video. The collaborative work between the Tassomai research team and the EDUCATE business and research mentors provided an environment to share expertise and channel it to improve Tassomai’s offering to learners. As a result of this study, Tassomai is now investing in the production of more instructive videos to help students understand difficult science concepts, and students will be offered these videos if they are having difficulty in answering the questions correctly.