The University of Georgia has been running a study in local schools since the beginning of the year and hopes to see the effort come to fruition as it progresses. Researchers from UGA have used Gainesville City Schools and Hall County Schools as a test site for their "Instructional Conversation" study, aimed to jump-start intellectual conversation in today's classrooms. "This strategy has been around a long time," said Karen Samuelsen, a research professor at UGA. "Most teachers who see it would say, ‘Oh, that's just best practices.' But it's never really been studied in a way that meets the evidence standards that the government wants to see."