How can you design an experiment to test the effectiveness of a new teaching method?

One challenge is that the causal effect of an educational approach is an emergent property of the relationship between the lesson and the learner. Therefore the effect can change over time as the student changes. The creater of LEED-certified buildings was a realtor looking for a niche market; he drew on environmental coursework from decades prior to develop the market for green buildings. The impact of his earlier education changed as he changed. This suggests the need to complement short-term assessments (Can students demonstrate mastery of this skill?) with regular surveys of people later in life, asking what part of their education mattered most and why. Then map backward to distill insights for teaching effectiveness.

If you want to design an experiment to test the effectiveness of a new teaching method, you need to clearly define the hypothesis or objective, and specify your variables as dependent and independent or factor variables, it is important to communicate with a statistician at least if you are going to conduct a statistical analysis.

One thing I have found helpful making learning fun and simple to understand. It helps in retention and reduces confusion. When also motivates students to when to having such a lesson again especially it activities are incorporated into the learning.

Pre-post designs, randomised control trials and incorporation of repeated measures are various mechanisms in the context of experimental studies.

You can apply new methods as an experimental study by using new technologies and how they will affect students as it will be the sample size, determine how you will implement the new method and also the control condition

When conducting studies as experimental vs control, try to collect data on the dependent variable as scores and it will be the outcome to test this variable statistically

It is very important to interpret the results after conducting the right statistical tests, try also to explain the results clearly in a manner way and why you have used these tests, determine whether the new teaching method had a significant effect on the dependent variables and whether the results support your hypothesis. Communication with the audience is very important to understand the statistical concepts so the conclusion will be written based on the findings.

While a randomised controlled trial might be the best in terms of assessing the causal effect of a new teaching method, this may not be logistically feasible in this context. Randomising students into two groups to receive two types of teaching methods may be ethically questionable too. An interrupted time series analysis with a cluster randomised cross over design or a step wedge randomization of multiple sites (schools) may be two feasible alternative designs here.