Learning Collider Launches New Tool to Measure Efficiency Gains from R&D Infrastructure
Report and Post By: Crystal Godina, Riddhima Mishra, and Nitya Raviprakash
Research suggests that up to 80–90% of education interventions fail to produce meaningful improvements in student learning outcomes. That doesn’t mean the research is wasted — it means uncovering what works requires testing more ideas, more often.
At Learning Collider, we set out to understand how investments in R&D infrastructure affect the speed and cost of conducting education research. This work, conducted in partnership with the Gates Foundation, explored how different types of research infrastructure can reduce operational burdens and make research more efficient.
Why R&D Infrastructure Matters
Investments in R&D infrastructure can reduce the time and cost of conducting research by addressing common bottlenecks in the research process. Tools such as data enclaves, instrumental instructional platforms and experimentation solutions can streamline activities like data access, implementation monitoring and data collection, allowing researchers to conduct more studies with the same resources.
By lowering the operational burden of research, these investments have the potential to accelerate the generation of evidence and increase the likelihood of identifying interventions that improve student outcomes.
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What We Learned
To explore this, we analyzed 12 education R&D infrastructure projects across three categories:
Data Enclaves: secure environments that simplify access to large datasets.
Instrumented Instructional Platforms: digital learning platforms with built-in data collection and monitoring.
R&D Point Solutions: targeted tools such as A/B testing platforms that automate key parts of the research process.
We found that:
Instrumented instructional platforms produced some of the largest gains during study implementation and monitoring. By automating activities such as assessment scoring, usage tracking, and data collection, these platforms can substantially reduce the time and effort required to conduct research while creating faster feedback loops between researchers, educators, and developers.
R&D point solutions created more targeted efficiencies in specific parts of the research process. Tools such as experimentation and A/B testing platforms can streamline experimentation, analysis, and other specialized tasks, reducing engineering and data science burden while helping organizations test ideas more quickly.
Data enclaves helped reduce delays associated with data access, governance, and technical setup. By simplifying how researchers access and work with large or sensitive datasets, they can reduce administrative burden and allow researchers to spend more time on analysis and discovery.
Projects that combined multiple forms of infrastructure often produced the broadest gains. Integrated systems that linked data access, implementation monitoring, and analysis capabilities were able to streamline multiple stages of the research process, reducing overall timelines by up to a year in some cases.
Across all categories, we see that infrastructure investments can reduce bottlenecks in setup, implementation, monitoring, and analysis, allowing organizations to conduct more research with the same resources.
Capturing Efficiency Gains
This work also highlighted an important gap: while organizations often know that infrastructure investments improve research processes, there are few standardized ways to measure and communicate those efficiency gains.
Teams can point to research moving faster or requiring fewer resources, but quantifying those improvements in a consistent way remains challenging. This makes it difficult to understand the value of infrastructure investments, compare approaches, and communicate impact to partners and funders.
Introducing the Efficiency Gains and ROI Calculator
To help address this, Learning Collider developed a new Efficiency Gains and ROI Calculator alongside our report, Capturing Efficiency Gains from R&D Infrastructure Investment.
The calculator provides researchers, ed tech organizations, product teams, and funders with a practical framework for benchmarking existing research workflows, modeling proposed infrastructure investments, and estimating associated time, cost, and social return on investment gains.
For example, an ed tech organization might use the calculator to estimate how much time and engineering effort could be saved by implementing an experimentation platform. A research team could use it to quantify how a new data system changes study setup, implementation, and analysis timelines. Funders can use the framework to better understand and communicate the value of their investments in research infrastructure.
As organizations continue investing in experimentation systems, AI-enabled research tools, integrated data infrastructure, and embedded analytics, we hope these resources can highlight the operational and social value of those investments.
Learn More
Read the full report here: https://tinyurl.com/CapturingEfficiencyGainsReport
Access the Efficiency Gains and ROI Calculator here*: https://tinyurl.com/SocialROICalculator
*Note: The app may automatically go to sleep when inactive. Simply click “Yes, get this app back up!” if prompted.
