Educational Research + How Has Increased Science Instruction Impacted Math and Reading Outcomes
Leading up to the 75th anniversary of the UN General Associates, this "Realizing the promise: How can education technology improve learning for all?" publication kicks off the Center for Universal Instruction's first playbook in a series to aid amend didactics effectually the globe.
It is intended as an testify-based tool for ministries of education, peculiarly in depression- and middle-income countries, to adopt and more than successfully invest in education technology.
While in that location is no single education initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere—as school systems differ in learners and educators, as well equally in the availability and quality of materials and technologies—an important first step is agreement how engineering is used given specific local contexts and needs.
The surveys in this playbook are designed to exist adjusted to collect this information from educators, learners, and school leaders and guide decisionmakers in expanding the utilise of technology.
Introduction
While technology has disrupted most sectors of the economy and changed how we communicate, access data, work, and even play, its bear on on schools, teaching, and learning has been much more limited. We believe that this limited impact is primarily due to technology being been used to supervene upon analog tools, without much consideration given to playing to engineering science'south comparative advantages. These comparative advantages, relative to traditional "chalk-and-talk" classroom teaching, include helping to scale upward standardized instruction, facilitate differentiated educational activity, aggrandize opportunities for practice, and increase pupil engagement. When schools use technology to enhance the work of educators and to improve the quality and quantity of educational content, learners will thrive.
Further, COVID-19 has laid bare that, in today'southward environment where pandemics and the effects of climate alter are likely to occur, schools cannot always provide in-person education—making the instance for investing in education technology.
Here nosotros debate for a simple yet surprisingly rare approach to education technology that seeks to:
- Understand the needs, infrastructure, and capacity of a school system—the diagnosis;
- Survey the best available evidence on interventions that match those conditions—the show; and
- Closely monitor the results of innovations before they are scaled up—the prognosis.
The framework
Our approach builds on a unproblematic yet intuitive theoretical framework created two decades ago by two of the nigh prominent pedagogy researchers in the Usa, David One thousand. Cohen and Deborah Loewenberg Ball. They argue that what matters most to improve learning is the interactions among educators and learners around educational materials. Nosotros believe that the failed school-comeback efforts in the U.Due south. that motivated Cohen and Brawl'southward framework resemble the ed-tech reforms in much of the developing world to appointment in the lack of clarity improving the interactions betwixt educators, learners, and the educational material. Nosotros build on their framework by adding parents as key agents that mediate the relationships betwixt learners and educators and the material (Figure one).
Figure 1: The instructional core
Adapted from Cohen and Ball (1999)
Every bit the effigy above suggests, ed-tech interventions can affect the instructional core in a myriad of means. Nevertheless, only because technology tin practise something, it does not mean it should. School systems in developing countries differ along many dimensions and each system is likely to take different needs for ed-tech interventions, also equally different infrastructure and capacity to enact such interventions.
The diagnosis:
How tin school systems assess their needs and preparedness?
A useful first step for any school organisation to determine whether it should invest in pedagogy technology is to diagnose its:
- Specific needs to improve student learning (eastward.g., raising the boilerplate level of achievement, remediating gaps among low performers, and challenging high performers to develop higher-lodge skills);
- Infrastructure to adopt engineering-enabled solutions (e.g., electricity connection, availability of infinite and outlets, stock of computers, and Internet connectivity at school and at learners' homes); and
- Chapters to integrate technology in the instructional process (e.one thousand., learners' and educators' level of familiarity and comfort with hardware and software, their beliefs about the level of usefulness of engineering science for learning purposes, and their electric current uses of such technology).
Earlier engaging in any new data collection practice, schoolhouse systems should take full advantage of existing authoritative data that could shed light on these iii main questions. This could exist in the grade of internal evaluations simply likewise international learner assessments, such as the Programme for International Educatee Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and/or the Progress in International Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the Pedagogy and Learning International Study (TALIS). But if school systems lack information on their preparedness for ed-tech reforms or if they seek to complement existing information with a richer set of indicators, nosotros developed a set of surveys for learners, educators, and school leaders. Download the total written report to see how we map out the main aspects covered by these surveys, in hopes of highlighting how they could be used to inform decisions around the adoption of ed-tech interventions.
The evidence:
How can school systems identify promising ed-tech interventions?
There is no single "ed-tech" initiative that will achieve the same results everywhere, just considering schoolhouse systems differ in learners and educators, too as in the availability and quality of materials and technologies. Instead, to realize the potential of education engineering to accelerate student learning, decisionmakers should focus on four potential uses of technology that play to its comparative advantages and complement the piece of work of educators to advance student learning (Figure 2). These comparative advantages include:
- Scaling up quality instruction, such every bit through prerecorded quality lessons.
- Facilitating differentiated educational activity, through, for case, computer-adaptive learning and live 1-on-1 tutoring.
- Expanding opportunities to practice.
- Increasing learner engagement through videos and games.
Effigy 2: Comparative advantages of technology
Adapted from Cohen and Brawl (1999)
Here nosotros review the testify on ed-tech interventions from 37 studies in 20 countries*, organizing them past comparative advantage. It's important to annotation that ours is non the just way to allocate these interventions (due east.g., video tutorials could exist considered as a strategy to scale upwards didactics or increase learner engagement), but we believe it may be useful to highlight the needs that they could address and why technology is well positioned to do so.
When discussing specific studies, we report the magnitude of the effects of interventions using standard deviations (SDs). SDs are a widely used metric in research to express the event of a programme or policy with respect to a business-as-usual status (due east.g., test scores). There are several ways to brand sense of them. One is to categorize the magnitude of the effects based on the results of touch on evaluations. In developing countries, furnishings below 0.1 SDs are considered to be small, furnishings between 0.i and 0.2 SDs are medium, and those above 0.2 SDs are big (for reviews that estimate the average effect of groups of interventions, chosen "meta analyses," see e.one thousand., Conn, 2017; Kremer, Brannen, & Glennerster, 2013; McEwan, 2014; Snilstveit et al., 2015; Evans & Yuan, 2020.)
*In surveying the testify, we began by compiling studies from prior full general and ed-tech specific evidence reviews that some of usa accept written and from ed-tech reviews conducted past others. Then, we tracked the studies cited past the ones nosotros had previously read and reviewed those, as well. In identifying studies for inclusion, we focused on experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of education technology interventions from pre-school to secondary schoolhouse in low- and middle-income countries that were released between 2000 and 2020. We only included interventions that sought to improve student learning directly (i.e., students' interaction with the material), every bit opposed to interventions that have impacted accomplishment indirectly, past reducing teacher absenteeism or increasing parental engagement. This process yielded 37 studies in 20 countries (see the full listing of studies in Appendix B).
Scaling up standardized instruction
I of the ways in which engineering may improve the quality of education is through its capacity to deliver standardized quality content at scale. This feature of engineering science may be particularly useful in three types of settings: (a) those in "hard-to-staff" schools (i.e., schools that struggle to recruit educators with the requisite grooming and experience—typically, in rural and/or remote areas) (see, e.k., Urquiola & Vegas, 2005); (b) those in which many educators are frequently absent from school (e.one thousand., Chaudhury, Hammer, Kremer, Muralidharan, & Rogers, 2006; Muralidharan, Das, Holla, & Mohpal, 2017); and/or (c) those in which educators have low levels of pedagogical and subject matter expertise (e.g., Bietenbeck, Piopiunik, & Wiederhold, 2018; Assuming et al., 2017; Metzler & Woessmann, 2012; Santibañez, 2006) and do not take opportunities to observe and receive feedback (eastward.one thousand., Bruns, Costa, & Cunha, 2018; Cilliers, Fleisch, Prinsloo, & Taylor, 2018). Technology could address this trouble by: (a) disseminating lessons delivered by qualified educators to a large number of learners (east.g., through prerecorded or live lessons); (b) enabling altitude instruction (e.yard., for learners in remote areas and/or during periods of school closures); and (c) distributing hardware preloaded with educational materials.
Prerecorded lessons
Technology seems to be well placed to amplify the touch on of effective educators by disseminating their lessons. Evidence on the bear upon of prerecorded lessons is encouraging, only not conclusive. Some initiatives that have used short instructional videos to complement regular instruction, in conjunction with other learning materials, accept raised educatee learning on independent assessments. For example, Beg et al. (2020) evaluated an initiative in Punjab, Pakistan in which grade 8 classrooms received an intervention that included short videos to substitute alive instruction, quizzes for learners to practice the material from every lesson, tablets for educators to learn the textile and follow the lesson, and LED screens to project the videos onto a classroom screen. After six months, the intervention improved the performance of learners on independent tests of math and science by 0.19 and 0.24 SDs, respectively simply had no discernible outcome on the math and scientific discipline section of Punjab's loftier-stakes exams.
One study suggests that approaches that are far less technologically sophisticated can likewise improve learning outcomes—especially, if the business-as-usual instruction is of low quality. For instance, Naslund-Hadley, Parker, and Hernandez-Agramonte (2014) evaluated a preschool math plan in Cordillera, Paraguay that used audio segments and written materials four days per week for an hour per twenty-four hours during the schoolhouse day. Later five months, the intervention improved math scores by 0.sixteen SDs, narrowing gaps between low- and loftier-achieving learners, and between those with and without educators with formal grooming in early on childhood pedagogy.
Nonetheless, the integration of prerecorded cloth into regular pedagogy has not always been successful. For example, de Barros (2020) evaluated an intervention that combined instructional videos for math and scientific discipline with infrastructure upgrades (e.thou., 2 "smart" classrooms, two TVs, and two tablets), printed workbooks for students, and in-service training for educators of learners in grades 9 and 10 in Haryana, India (all materials were mapped onto the official curriculum). Later 11 months, the intervention negatively impacted math accomplishment (by 0.08 SDs) and had no effect on science (with respect to business every bit usual classes). Information technology reduced the share of lesson fourth dimension that educators devoted to instruction and negatively impacted an index of instructional quality. Likewise, Seo (2017) evaluated several combinations of infrastructure (solar lights and TVs) and prerecorded videos (in English and/or bilingual) for grade 11 students in northern Tanzania and found that none of the variants improved student learning, fifty-fifty when the videos were used. The study reports effects from the infrastructure component across variants, but every bit others take noted (Muralidharan, Romero, & Wüthrich, 2019), this arroyo to estimating affect is problematic.
A very similar intervention delivered after school hours, however, had sizeable effects on learners' basic skills. Chiplunkar, Dhar, and Nagesh (2020) evaluated an initiative in Chennai (the capital city of the state of Tamil Nadu, Republic of india) delivered past the aforementioned organization as higher up that combined short videos that explained key concepts in math and scientific discipline with worksheets, facilitator-led instruction, small groups for peer-to-peer learning, and occasional career counseling and guidance for grade 9 students. These lessons took place after school for one hour, five times a week. Afterwards 10 months, it had large effects on learners' accomplishment equally measured by tests of basic skills in math and reading, only no effect on a standardized high-stakes test in grade ten or socio-emotional skills (eastward.chiliad., teamwork, decisionmaking, and communication).
Drawing general lessons from this trunk of inquiry is challenging for at least two reasons. Beginning, all of the studies above have evaluated the touch on of prerecorded lessons combined with several other components (due east.chiliad., hardware, print materials, or other activities). Therefore, it is possible that the furnishings found are due to these boosted components, rather than to the recordings themselves, or to the interaction between the 2 (see Muralidharan, 2017 for a give-and-take of the challenges of interpreting "bundled" interventions). 2nd, while these studies evaluate some type of prerecorded lessons, none examines the content of such lessons. Thus, information technology seems entirely plausible that the direction and magnitude of the effects depends largely on the quality of the recordings (east.1000., the expertise of the educator recording it, the amount of grooming that went into planning the recording, and its alignment with best teaching practices).
These studies as well enhance three important questions worth exploring in future enquiry. Ane of them is why none of the interventions discussed above had effects on high-stakes exams, even if their materials are typically mapped onto the official curriculum. It is possible that the official curricula are just likewise challenging for learners in these settings, who are several grade levels behind expectations and who often need to reinforce basic skills (see Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Another question is whether these interventions have long-term furnishings on teaching practices. Information technology seems plausible that, if these interventions are deployed in contexts with low teaching quality, educators may larn something from watching the videos or listening to the recordings with learners. Yet another question is whether these interventions make it easier for schools to deliver instruction to learners whose native linguistic communication is other than the official medium of education.
Distance education
Technology can also allow learners living in remote areas to access education. The evidence on these initiatives is encouraging. For example, Johnston and Ksoll (2017) evaluated a program that broadcasted live pedagogy via satellite to rural principal schoolhouse students in the Volta and Greater Accra regions of Ghana. For this purpose, the program also equipped classrooms with the technology needed to connect to a studio in Accra, including solar panels, a satellite modem, a projector, a webcam, microphones, and a figurer with interactive software. After two years, the intervention improved the numeracy scores of students in grades 2 through 4, and some foundational literacy tasks, just information technology had no effect on attendance or classroom time devoted to instruction, every bit captured by school visits. The authors interpreted these results as suggesting that the gains in achievement may be due to improving the quality of instruction that children received (as opposed to increased instructional time). Naik, Chitre, Bhalla, and Rajan (2019) evaluated a similar programme in the Indian country of Karnataka and also found positive effects on learning outcomes, but it is not clear whether those effects are due to the programme or due to differences in the groups of students they compared to estimate the impact of the initiative.
In one context (United mexican states), this type of distance instruction had positive long-term furnishings. Navarro-Sola (2019) took advantage of the staggered rollout of the telesecundarias (i.e., middle schools with lessons broadcasted through satellite TV) in 1968 to gauge its bear upon. The policy had short-term effects on students' enrollment in school: For every telesecundaria per fifty children, 10 students enrolled in eye school and two pursued further education. It also had a long-term influence on the educational and employment trajectory of its graduates. Each additional year of education induced by the policy increased average income by virtually 18 percentage. This effect was attributable to more than graduates inbound the labor force and shifting from agronomics and the informal sector. Similarly, Fabregas (2019) leveraged a after expansion of this policy in 1993 and establish that each boosted telesecundaria per 1,000 adolescents led to an average increment of 0.2 years of education, and a decline in fertility for women, but no conclusive bear witness of long-term effects on labor market outcomes.
Information technology is crucial to interpret these results keeping in mind the settings where the interventions were implemented. As we mention above, role of the reason why they have proven effective is that the "counterfactual" conditions for learning (i.e., what would have happened to learners in the absence of such programs) was either to not have access to schooling or to be exposed to low-quality instruction. School systems interested in taking up like interventions should assess the extent to which their learners (or parts of their learner population) discover themselves in like conditions to the subjects of the studies above. This illustrates the importance of assessing the needs of a system before reviewing the prove.
Preloaded hardware
Technology too seems well positioned to disseminate educational materials. Specifically, hardware (eastward.yard., desktop computers, laptops, or tablets) could also assist deliver educational software (e.g., word processing, reference texts, and/or games). In theory, these materials could not merely undergo a quality assurance review (eastward.one thousand., by curriculum specialists and educators), but also draw on the interactions with learners for adjustments (eastward.g., identifying areas needing reinforcement) and enable interactions betwixt learners and educators.
In practice, however, most initiatives that have provided learners with free computers, laptops, and netbooks do not leverage whatever of the opportunities mentioned above. Instead, they install a standard set of educational materials and promise that learners find them helpful enough to have them up on their own. Students rarely practice and so, and instead use the laptops for recreational purposes—oft, to the detriment of their learning (see, e.one thousand., Malamud & Pop-Eleches, 2011). In fact, gratis netbook initiatives have not only consistently failed to improve academic achievement in math or language (e.g., Cristia et al., 2017), but they take had no impact on learners' general computer skills (e.g., Beuermann et al., 2015). Some of these initiatives accept had small impacts on cognitive skills, just the mechanisms through which those furnishings occurred remains unclear.
To our knowledge, the only successful deployment of a free laptop initiative was ane in which a team of researchers equipped the computers with remedial software. Mo et al. (2013) evaluated a version of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) plan for class 3 students in migrant schools in Beijing, China in which the laptops were loaded with a remedial software mapped onto the national curriculum for math (like to the software products that nosotros hash out under "practice exercises" below). After nine months, the program improved math achievement by 0.17 SDs and computer skills past 0.33 SDs. If a schoolhouse arrangement decides to invest in free laptops, this study suggests that the quality of the software on the laptops is crucial.
To date, however, the evidence suggests that children do not learn more than from interacting with laptops than they do from textbooks. For case, Bando, Gallego, Gertler, and Romero (2016) compared the effect of free laptop and textbook provision in 271 simple schools in disadvantaged areas of Honduras. After 7 months, students in grades 3 and half-dozen who had received the laptops performed on par with those who had received the textbooks in math and language. Further, even if textbooks essentially become obsolete at the stop of each schoolhouse yr, whereas laptops tin can be reloaded with new materials for each year, the costs of laptop provision (not only the hardware, merely too the technical assist, Net, and training associated with it) are not yet low enough to make them a more cost-constructive mode of delivering content to learners.
Bear witness on the provision of tablets equipped with software is encouraging just limited. For case, de Hoop et al. (2020) evaluated a composite intervention for commencement form students in Republic of zambia'south Eastern Province that combined infrastructure (electricity via solar power), hardware (projectors and tablets), and educational materials (lesson plans for educators and interactive lessons for learners, both loaded onto the tablets and mapped onto the official Zambian curriculum). Afterward xiv months, the intervention had improved student early-class reading by 0.four SDs, oral vocabulary scores by 0.25 SDs, and early-grade math by 0.22 SDs. It also improved students' achievement by 0.16 on a locally developed assessment. The multifaceted nature of the program, however, makes it challenging to identify the components that are driving the positive effects. Pitchford (2015) evaluated an intervention that provided tablets equipped with educational "apps," to be used for 30 minutes per day for 2 months to develop early math skills amidst students in grades 1 through 3 in Lilongwe, Malawi. The evaluation found positive impacts in math achievement, but the main study limitation is that it was conducted in a unmarried schoolhouse.
Facilitating differentiated teaching
Another way in which technology may improve educational outcomes is by facilitating the delivery of differentiated or individualized instruction. Most developing countries massively expanded admission to schooling in recent decades past building new schools and making education more than affordable, both by defraying direct costs, as well every bit compensating for opportunity costs (Duflo, 2001; Globe Bank, 2018). These initiatives have not only rapidly increased the number of learners enrolled in schoolhouse, but have also increased the variability in learner' training for schooling. Consequently, a big number of learners perform well below grade-based curricular expectations (see, due east.g., Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2011; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). These learners are unlikely to go much from "one-size-fits-all" instruction, in which a single educator delivers instruction accounted advisable for the middle (or top) of the achievement distribution (Banerjee & Duflo, 2011). Technology could potentially help these learners by providing them with: (a) instruction and opportunities for practice that accommodate to the level and pace of training of each individual (known as "computer-adaptive learning" (CAL)); or (b) live, one-on-one tutoring.
Computer-adaptive learning
One of the primary comparative advantages of technology is its ability to diagnose students' initial learning levels and assign students to instruction and exercises of appropriate difficulty. No individual educator—no matter how talented—can be expected to provide individualized instruction to all learners in his/her class simultaneously. In this respect, technology is uniquely positioned to complement traditional pedagogy. This use of technology could help learners master basic skills and help them go more out of schooling.
Although many software products evaluated in recent years have been categorized as CAL, many rely on a relatively coarse level of differentiation at an initial stage (e.g., a diagnostic test) without further differentiation. We discuss these initiatives under the category of "increasing opportunities for practice" below. CAL initiatives complement an initial diagnostic with dynamic adaptation (i.e., at each response or fix of responses from learners) to adjust both the initial level of difficulty and charge per unit at which it increases or decreases, depending on whether learners' responses are right or wrong.
Existing bear witness on this specific blazon of programs is highly promising. Nearly famously, Banerjee et al. (2007) evaluated CAL software in Vadodara, in the Indian state of Gujarat, in which form 4 students were offered 2 hours of shared estimator time per week before and later school, during which they played games that involved solving math issues. The level of difficulty of such bug adjusted based on students' answers. This program improved math achievement by 0.35 and 0.47 SDs after one and two years of implementation, respectively. Consistent with the promise of personalized learning, the software improved achievement for all students. In fact, one twelvemonth later the cease of the program, students assigned to the program still performed 0.ane SDs better than those assigned to a business every bit usual condition. More recently, Muralidharan, et al. (2019) evaluated a "composite learning" initiative in which students in grades 4 through nine in Delhi, Republic of india received 45 minutes of interaction with CAL software for math and language, and 45 minutes of small group teaching before or later on going to schoolhouse. Later on only 4.five months, the plan improved achievement past 0.37 SDs in math and 0.23 SDs in Hindi. While all learners benefited from the program in absolute terms, the everyman performing learners benefited the nigh in relative terms, since they were learning very piffling in school.
We encounter two important limitations from this torso of research. First, to our knowledge, none of these initiatives has been evaluated when implemented during the school twenty-four hours. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish the effect of the adaptive software from that of additional instructional time. Second, given that most of these programs were facilitated by local instructors, attempts to distinguish the effect of the software from that of the instructors has been mostly based on noncausal evidence. A frontier challenge in this body of research is to empathise whether CAL software can increase the effectiveness of school-based instruction past substituting function of the regularly scheduled fourth dimension for math and language instruction.
Live one-on-1 tutoring
Contempo improvements in the speed and quality of videoconferencing, as well as in the connectivity of remote areas, have enabled nonetheless another way in which technology tin can help personalization: live (i.e., real-time) one-on-i tutoring. While the show on in-person tutoring is scarce in developing countries, existing studies suggest that this arroyo works all-time when it is used to personalize didactics (see, e.g., Banerjee et al., 2007; Banerji, Berry, & Shotland, 2015; Cabezas, Cuesta, & Gallego, 2011).
There are most no studies on the bear on of online tutoring—possibly, due to the lack of hardware and Cyberspace connectivity in low- and heart-income countries. One exception is Chemin and Oledan (2020)'s recent evaluation of an online tutoring program for grade 6 students in Kianyaga, Republic of kenya to learn English language from volunteers from a Canadian university via Skype ( videoconferencing software) for 1 hour per calendar week after school. After 10 months, program beneficiaries performed 0.22 SDs better in a examination of oral comprehension, improved their comfort using technology for learning, and became more than willing to engage in cross-cultural communication. Chiefly, while the tutoring sessions used the official English textbooks and sought in part to help learners with their homework, tutors were trained on several strategies to teach to each learner'due south private level of preparation, focusing on basic skills if necessary. To our knowledge, similar initiatives within a state have non even so been rigorously evaluated.
Expanding opportunities for practice
A third way in which technology may improve the quality of education is by providing learners with boosted opportunities for do. In many developing countries, lesson time is primarily devoted to lectures, in which the educator explains the topic and the learners passively re-create explanations from the blackboard. This setup leaves little fourth dimension for in-form practice. Consequently, learners who did not sympathize the caption of the textile during lecture struggle when they take to solve homework assignments on their own. Technology could potentially address this problem by allowing learners to review topics at their own pace.
Do exercises
Applied science can assistance learners become more than out of traditional pedagogy by providing them with opportunities to implement what they acquire in class. This approach could, in theory, permit some learners to anchor their understanding of the cloth through trial and error (i.e., by realizing what they may not accept understood correctly during lecture and by getting ameliorate acquainted with special cases not covered in-depth in class).
Existing show on practice exercises reflects both the promise and the limitations of this use of technology in developing countries. For example, Lai et al. (2013) evaluated a program in Shaanxi, China where students in grades 3 and 5 were required to attend two 40-minute remedial sessions per calendar week in which they first watched videos that reviewed the material that had been introduced in their math lessons that week and and then played games to practice the skills introduced in the video. After iv months, the intervention improved math accomplishment by 0.12 SDs. Many other evaluations of comparable interventions have institute similar small-to-moderate results (see, e.g., Lai, Luo, Zhang, Huang, & Rozelle, 2015; Lai et al., 2012; Mo et al., 2015; Pitchford, 2015). These effects, however, accept been consistently smaller than those of initiatives that adjust the difficulty of the material based on students' performance (e.thou., Banerjee et al., 2007; Muralidharan, et al., 2019). We hypothesize that these programs do niggling for learners who perform several grade levels behind curricular expectations, and who would benefit more from a review of foundational concepts from earlier grades.
We see two important limitations from this research. Starting time, most initiatives that accept been evaluated thus far combine instructional videos with practice exercises, so it is hard to know whether their effects are driven by the former or the latter. In fact, the program in China described above allowed learners to inquire their peers whenever they did non empathise a difficult concept, so it potentially besides captured the outcome of peer-to-peer collaboration. To our cognition, no studies have addressed this gap in the bear witness.
Second, most of these programs are implemented before or after schoolhouse, so nosotros cannot distinguish the issue of boosted instructional fourth dimension from that of the actual opportunity for practise. The importance of this question was first highlighted by Linden (2008), who compared two delivery mechanisms for game-based remedial math software for students in grades 2 and 3 in a network of schools run by a nonprofit organization in Gujarat, Bharat: ane in which students interacted with the software during the school day and another one in which students interacted with the software earlier or later on school (in both cases, for three hours per day). After a year, the first version of the programme had negatively impacted students' math achievement by 0.57 SDs and the second one had a zilch effect. This study suggested that computer-assisted learning is a poor substitute for regular instruction when it is of high quality, as was the case in this well-functioning individual network of schools.
In recent years, several studies have sought to remedy this shortcoming. Mo et al. (2014) were among the start to evaluate practice exercises delivered during the schoolhouse day. They evaluated an initiative in Shaanxi, China in which students in grades three and five were required to collaborate with the software similar to the one in Lai et al. (2013) for two 40-minute sessions per calendar week. The primary limitation of this study, all the same, is that the program was delivered during regularly scheduled reckoner lessons, so it could non determine the impact of substituting regular math educational activity. Similarly, Mo et al. (2020) evaluated a self-paced and a teacher-directed version of a like plan for English for grade five students in Qinghai, Communist china. Yet, the key shortcoming of this study is that the teacher-directed version added several components that may also influence accomplishment, such equally increased opportunities for teachers to provide students with personalized help when they struggled with the fabric. Ma, Fairlie, Loyalka, and Rozelle (2020) compared the effectiveness of additional time-delivered remedial instruction for students in grades 4 to 6 in Shaanxi, China through either estimator-assisted software or using workbooks. This report indicates whether additional instructional time is more effective when using technology, but information technology does not accost the question of whether school systems may amend the productivity of instructional time during the school solar day by substituting educator-led with computer-assisted teaching.
Increasing learner appointment
Another mode in which technology may improve education is past increasing learners' date with the material. In many school systems, regular "chalk and talk" instruction prioritizes time for educators' exposition over opportunities for learners to inquire clarifying questions and/or contribute to class discussions. This, combined with the fact that many developing-country classrooms include a very large number of learners (come across, eastward.g., Angrist & Lavy, 1999; Duflo, Dupas, & Kremer, 2015), may partially explicate why the bulk of those students are several class levels behind curricular expectations (e.grand., Muralidharan, et al., 2019; Muralidharan & Zieleniak, 2014; Pritchett & Beatty, 2015). Technology could potentially address these challenges by: (a) using video tutorials for self-paced learning and (b) presenting exercises every bit games and/or gamifying practice.
Video tutorials
Technology can potentially increase learner effort and understanding of the material by finding new and more engaging ways to deliver information technology. Video tutorials designed for cocky-paced learning—as opposed to videos for whole grade instruction, which we hash out under the category of "prerecorded lessons" above—can increase learner try in multiple ways, including: assuasive learners to focus on topics with which they need more than aid, letting them correct errors and misconceptions on their ain, and making the material appealing through visual aids. They tin increase understanding by breaking the material into smaller units and tackling mutual misconceptions.
In spite of the popularity of instructional videos, at that place is relatively niggling testify on their effectiveness. Yet, two recent evaluations of different versions of the Khan Academy portal, which mainly relies on instructional videos, offer some insight into their bear on. First, Ferman, Finamor, and Lima (2019) evaluated an initiative in 157 public primary and center schools in five cities in Brazil in which the teachers of students in grades 5 and 9 were taken to the computer lab to larn math from the platform for fifty minutes per week. The authors institute that, while the intervention slightly improved learners' attitudes toward math, these changes did not translate into ameliorate performance in this subject. The authors hypothesized that this could exist due to the reduction of teacher-led math pedagogy.
More recently, Büchel, Jakob, Kühnhanss, Steffen, and Brunetti (2020) evaluated an after-school, offline delivery of the Khan University portal in grades three through 6 in 302 primary schools in Morazán, El salvador. Students in this written report received ninety minutes per calendar week of boosted math instruction (effectively nearly doubling total math instruction per week) through teacher-led regular lessons, teacher-assisted Khan University lessons, or like lessons assisted by technical supervisors with no content expertise. (Importantly, the first group provided differentiated pedagogy, which is not the norm in Salvadorian schools). All three groups outperformed both schools without any additional lessons and classrooms without boosted lessons in the same schools every bit the program. The teacher-assisted Khan Academy lessons performed 0.24 SDs improve, the supervisor-led lessons 0.22 SDs improve, and the teacher-led regular lessons 0.fifteen SDs better, but the authors could non decide whether the effects beyond versions were different.
Together, these studies suggest that instructional videos work all-time when provided equally a complement to, rather than equally a substitute for, regular instruction. All the same, the chief limitation of these studies is the multifaceted nature of the Khan Academy portal, which as well includes other components found to positively improve learner accomplishment, such equally differentiated instruction by students' learning levels. While the software does not provide the type of personalization discussed in a higher place, learners are asked to take a placement test and, based on their score, educators assign them unlike piece of work. Therefore, it is not clear from these studies whether the furnishings from Khan Academy are driven by its instructional videos or to the software's ability to provide differentiated activities when combined with placement tests.
Games and gamification
Technology tin as well increase learner engagement by presenting exercises every bit games and/or by encouraging learner to play and compete with others (eastward.g., using leaderboards and rewards)—an approach known as "gamification." Both approaches can increase learner motivation and try by presenting learners with entertaining opportunities for practice and by leveraging peers as delivery devices.
There are very few studies on the effects of games and gamification in low- and middle-income countries. Recently, Araya, Arias Ortiz, Bottan, and Cristia (2019) evaluated an initiative in which class 4 students in Santiago, Chile were required to participate in two ninety-minute sessions per calendar week during the school twenty-four hour period with instructional math software featuring individual and group competitions (e.k., tracking each learner's standing in his/her grade and tournaments between sections). Subsequently nine months, the plan led to improvements of 0.27 SDs in the national educatee cess in math (information technology had no spillover effects on reading). Yet, it had mixed furnishings on non-academic outcomes. Specifically, the program increased learners' willingness to use computers to learn math, merely, at the same time, increased their anxiety toward math and negatively impacted learners' willingness to collaborate with peers. Finally, given that one of the weekly sessions replaced regular math pedagogy and the other one represented additional math instructional time, it is not articulate whether the academic effects of the program are driven by the software or the additional time devoted to learning math.
The prognosis:
How can school systems adopt interventions that lucifer their needs?
Here are five specific and sequential guidelines for decisionmakers to realize the potential of instruction technology to accelerate student learning.
1. Have stock of how your current schools, educators, and learners are engaging with engineering science.
Comport out a short in-school survey to understand the current practices and potential barriers to adoption of engineering science (we accept included suggested survey instruments in the Appendices); employ this information in your decisionmaking procedure. For instance, we learned from conversations with current and old ministers of education from various developing regions that a mutual limitation to engineering apply is regulations that hold schoolhouse leaders answerable for damages to or losses of devices. Another common barrier is lack of admission to electricity and Internet, or even the availability of sufficient outlets for charging devices in classrooms. Understanding basic infrastructure and regulatory limitations to the utilise of education technology is a first necessary step. But addressing these limitations will not guarantee that introducing or expanding engineering science use will accelerate learning. The adjacent steps are thus necessary.
"In Africa, the biggest limit is connectivity. Fiber is expensive, and we don't accept it everywhere. The continent is creating a digital split up between cities, where there is fiber, and the rural areas.
The [Ghanaian] administration put in schools offline/online technologies with books, assessment tools, and open source materials. In deploying this, we are finding that again, teachers are unfamiliar with it. And existing policies prohibit students to bring their own tablets or cell phones. The easiest way to do information technology would have been to let everyone bring their own device. But policies are against it."
H.East. Matthew Prempeh, Government minister of Education of Republic of ghana, on the need to understand the local context.
two. Consider how the introduction of technology may bear upon the interactions among learners, educators, and content.
Our review of the prove indicates that technology may advance pupil learning when information technology is used to calibration up access to quality content, facilitate differentiated educational activity, increase opportunities for practice, or when it increases learner engagement. For example, volition calculation electronic whiteboards to classrooms facilitate access to more quality content or differentiated instruction? Or volition these expensive boards be used in the aforementioned mode every bit the old chalkboards? Will providing i device (laptop or tablet) to each learner facilitate access to more and better content, or offer students more opportunities to practice and learn? Solely introducing technology in classrooms without additional changes is unlikely to pb to improved learning and may be quite costly. If you cannot clearly identify how the interactions among the three key components of the instructional cadre (educators, learners, and content) may modify subsequently the introduction of technology, and so it is probably not a good idea to make the investment. See Appendix A for guidance on the types of questions to ask.
3. One time decisionmakers have a clear idea of how educational activity applied science tin help accelerate pupil learning in a specific context, it is important to define articulate objectives and goals and establish ways to regularly assess progress and make course corrections in a timely manner.
For instance, is the education engineering expected to ensure that learners in early grades excel in foundational skills—bones literacy and numeracy—by age 10? If and then, will the engineering provide quality reading and math materials, ample opportunities to practice, and engaging materials such as videos or games? Will educators exist empowered to use these materials in new ways? And how volition progress be measured and adjusted?
4. How this kind of reform is approached can matter immensely for its success.
Information technology is easy to nod to issues of "implementation," but that needs to exist more than rhetorical. Keep in mind that good use of education applied science requires thinking about how it will bear upon learners, educators, and parents. Subsequently all, giving learners digital devices will brand no departure if they get broken, are stolen, or get unused. Classroom technologies only thing if educators feel comfortable putting them to work. Since good technology is generally about complementing or amplifying what educators and learners already exercise, it is near always a mistake to mandate programs from on loftier. It is vital that applied science exist adopted with the input of educators and families and with attending to how it volition be used. If engineering science goes unused or if educators use it ineffectually, the results will disappoint—no thing the virtuosity of the technology. Indeed, unused education technology can be an unnecessary expenditure for cash-strapped education systems. This is why surveying context, listening to voices in the field, examining how technology is used, and planning for course correction is essential.
v. It is essential to communicate with a range of stakeholders, including educators, schoolhouse leaders, parents, and learners.
Engineering can feel alien in schools, misfile parents and (specially) older educators, or become an attracting distraction. Good communication tin aid address all of these risks. Taking care to listen to educators and families can aid ensure that programs are informed by their needs and concerns. At the same time, deliberately and consistently explaining what engineering is and is not supposed to do, how it can be near finer used, and the ways in which it can go far more than likely that programs piece of work equally intended. For instance, if teachers fright that technology is intended to reduce the need for educators, they will tend to be hostile; if they believe that information technology is intended to help them in their work, they will be more receptive. Absent effective communication, information technology is easy for programs to "fail" not considering of the technology but considering of how information technology was used. In brusque, past experience in rolling out instruction programs indicates that information technology is as important to accept a strong intervention blueprint as it is to have a solid programme to socialize information technology among stakeholders.
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Source: https://www.brookings.edu/essay/realizing-the-promise-how-can-education-technology-improve-learning-for-all/
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