This post follows up Phil Hill's criticism of the Gates Foundation as a messaging machine, and the response the foundation's Alison Pendergast (covered in OLDaily here and here). "In my opinion," writes Hill, "the flaw in the foundation's efforts is that they mistake product management for a research-based set of interventions." He argues that while courseware-based interventions sometimes work, often they do not. And "There is a fundamental difference between finding the most effective (i.e., research-based) interventions to achieve a stated goal and doing the best job you can with a pre-selected intervention. The Gates foundation is practicing the latter, which is product management." In particular, he says, "A research-based interventions approach would be open to try different methods and even enabling technologies to achieve their goals, or would focus on pedagogy first rather than technology implementation.
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