• Differences

    What is the difference between research and evaluation?

  • Releationships

    What is Outlier's relationship with The Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education (CEMSE), the University of Chicago, and the Urban Education Institute?

  • Why Reports?

    Why do you create online reports for your projects?

  • Work Opportunity

    How can I work with your group?

  • Need Evaluation

    Why do I need an evaluation?

  • RWB

    What happened to Researchers Without Borders (RWB)?

Our research projects focus on questions of interest to the education community, and seek to contribute to a growing and generalizable knowledgebase on particular topics. Our evaluation projects focus on helping our clients find the answers to specific questions they would like examined.

Outlier Research & Evaluation is the research and evaluation arm of CEMSE, which is a center in the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. The Urban Education Institute is a separate entity at the University of Chicago. Outlier collaborates with UEI when opportunities to do so arise. The Building an Operating System for Computer Science Education study was one such opportunity.

We have created online reports for a several of our research and evaluation projects including The Source evaluation, an evaluation of the Boston Schoolyard Initiative’s Science in the Schoolyard program, and the Building an Operating System for Computer Science Education study. We have developed this approach to reporting because it presents information in an engaging and interactive format. Online reports can be very helpful for our clients who want to disseminate information to broad audiences in ways that can’t be accomplished with only a print report.

We are always looking to develop collaborations, relationships, and new work with schools, educational organizations, businesses, and others who care about education. Most of our financial support comes from grants, evaluations, and other contracts. Reach out to any of our team members for more information.

Evaluations can provide valuable information about a range of issues including your program’s implementation, on-going growth, and impact. Some funders require evaluations to better understand their efforts and sometimes request that they be conducted by an external group in order to reduce actual, or the perception of bias. The best time to think about evaluation is when your program is beginning, but is helpful at any point in the implementation process.

RWB was an online platform for sharing our research work and products and for promoting open research in education. As part of developing our group’s new identity as Outlier Research & Evaluation, we have closed that platform and moved content that resided there to this site.