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Lessons Learned on ‘Scaling Up’ of Projects

Having developed a technology-based teaching unit on weather that appeared to work well for middle school students, Nancy Butler Songer and her colleagues at the University of Michigan decided in the late 1990s to take the next logical step in their research program: They scaled up.

Over two years, they recruited tens of thousands of teachers, students, and scientists from around the world to share data and take part in their Kids as Global Scientists computer network. But the researchers found it difficult—if not impossible—to reliably assess what was happening in all those schools and classrooms. Had their software program attracted a wide range of teachers or just the mavericks who were hungriest for change? Were teachers carrying out the lessons faithfully?

“We quickly realized that measuring impact by how many people does your intervention touch or influence was a pretty simplistic way of looking at it,” said Ms. Songer, a professor of science education and learning technologies at the campus in Ann Arbor, Mich. “The integrity of the...