Developing an innovation capable of adaptation into most school sites involves designing interventions that retain a substantial proportion of their effectiveness despite relatively barren settings in which some of the innovations important conditions for success (e.g., supportive administration, qualified teachers, well-maintained technology infrastructure) are missing or weakened. Under these circumstances, major aspects of an innovations design will not be enacted as intended by developers. Evolving robust-design strategies and studying the efficacy under inhospitable conditions of interventions produced using these ruggedized strategies are important. This paper describes our ongoing research into the development and implementation of robust-design strategies for scalability through design-based research on large-scale implementations of an educational multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) curriculum across a variety of contexts and conditions.