PONE-D-23-04795Digital Transformation in Schools of two South Regions of Sweden through Implementation-Informed Approach: A Mixed-Methods Study ProtocolPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Masiello,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

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(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for the opportunity to peer review this protocol. Some of my comments are suggested alternative ways of organising some of the work. These are only offered as suggestions that authors might consider, not as requirements for change.

Understandability

- I have read the protocol several times and it still feels quite unclear to me. Authors should attempt to make the intended activity easier to grasp for an external reader, perhaps through a visual flow chart of the activity that is planned and indicating which stakeholders are involved when and how. Because this is a large project over many years, it might be helpful to break down the work into smaller work packages, with specified input/output. Authors should consider creating a logic model, that ties the innovations, intervention and related activities more clearly to the “core components” (intermediary effects?) and desired outcomes.

- Practice profile: I don’t understand what this is.

What is already known/prior research

This protocol lacks description of what we know from earlier research about interventions to improve uptake of digital technology. The questions I had after reading this several times were:

- Why should teachers be using DLM (other than the government having decided that)? There may be many good reasons, but these are not presented.

- Why should teachers be using LADs (other than this research proposal having been funded to implement these)?

- What do we know about why this behaviour change in schools not been happening (is it lack of motivation, capability, opportunity?) What do we know about what teachers think (about the usefulness, barriers, facilitators, of using digital materials in teaching)?

- Where did the idea of School Teams intervention come from? Has it been tried elsewhere in the context of research (if so, has it been proven to be effective?)

- What do we know about other interventions to improve digital technology uptake in the classroom that could be alternatives to School Teams? (Is there a systematic review? Have authors reviewed the primary literature?)

Quasi-experiment vs. randomisation

- In this study, schools would be self-selecting to receive the intervention, rather than randomized. This can have an effect on the results in the favour of the intervention. For instance, schools that are already motivated will be more likely to participate, and they would then be compared to schools that were not so motivated to use digital technology. Authors should acknowledge the weaknesses of a non-randomised design and describe what measures they will take to compensate. (e.g. consider before-after or time-series analysis of intervention and control group). Additionally, final results may be less likely to be applicable to schools that are not already motivated, and therefore do not sign up to participate – this should be discussed.

LAD co-design/development/evaluation

- To an outsider, it seems to me that DLM is a very broad term covering any learning material that is digital, while LAD is a specific product or solution that exists in a beta form (i.e. described “SAVis: a Learning Analytics Dashboard with Interactive Visualization and Machine Learning”). Is that correct? It needs clarifying.

- It is not clear to me why development of LAD would be done within a quasi-experiment design, and the LAD described in the article “SAVis…” appears to not be developed to the point of being suitable for use by people who are not digitally savvy (it looks like a tool for computer experts, not for teachers who are not using much digital technology). Before embarking on a multi-school experiment, my preference would have been to establish a preliminary “development” work package for LAD that included:

o Needs assessment regarding LAD

o Design development: Co-design with groups of key stakeholders (e.g. teachers, principles, school ICT administrators, maybe students and parents too?) involving several cycles of rapid iteration, user testing, and improvement of the LAD, to ensure that the solution is useable, useful, accessible, desirable, and suited/fit for use in schools’ teaching and learning environments.

o Piloting of LAD use by teachers and principles, with data collection (e.g. observation, interviews, logs)

o Assess the effect of LAD on teachers/school principles use, satisfaction, and on student outcomes if possible,

by conducting a randomised trial , to understand if this innovation has the intended effect, before implementing it broadly. (You should be able to show that this LAD product has the desired effect on a set of outcomes, before setting about to implementing it on a broad scale).

School team intervention – development and evaluation before implementation?

- It might be prudent to carry out a preliminary study as I have suggested above (co-development of the School Team intervention by a group of pilot schools, followed by assessment of effect using randomized trial methodology), before seeking to implement this intervention on a broad scale in a non-randomised experiment. Perhaps authors have intended this, but I have not understood it correctly.

Reviewer #2: This paper describes a protocol that will be implemented in two areas of Sweden to document their school's digital transformation. The planned process has been thoroughly described and the research questions are clear and should provide comprehensive findings. The potential number of participants is quite large and, as such, will require detailed procedures such as outlined here.

While the protocol is well-considered, there are a number of general comments that need to be made. Overall the literature cited is dated. For example, the research that refers to 'the existing DLMs' was published in 2012. This is quite a long timeline for something as dynamic as technology implementation.

The protocol makes little reference to the technology infrastructure roll out. I know little about the Swedish school system and it may be already very well resourced in this area and this is already in place? 'Stage 2: Installation' makes the only reference to 'Acquire resources' but there seems little mention elsewhere of infrastructure and specialist technical staff. These would be things that are likely to have a huge impact on the progress of the digital transformation of a school. There is a statement made that 'the intervention program does not require major organizational changes' so perhaps infrastructure and appropriate staffing is already in place.

I wonder if any provision has been made for cross-school comparisons when each local municipality is responsible for the purchase of resources? Will all schools be equally well-resourced in this case and how might any variations affect the research results?

I also note that the EdTech 'companies are full research partners and have a say on the running of the researach work'. This will have to be managed carefully to ensure there is no conflicts of interest.

This will be a significant project and the results will potentially have wide-ranging impact. I look forward to reading about it further in the future.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Leanne Cameron

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Digital Transformation in Schools of two South Regions of Sweden through Implementation-Informed Approach: A Mixed-Methods Study Protocol

PONE-D-23-04795R1

Dear Dr. Masiello,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements and corrections of some minor typographical errors (see attached "reviewed manuscript with editor comments").

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Kind regards,

Subhashni Taylor, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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