Computer-Assisted Instruction for Child Development: Evidence from an Educational Programme in Rural Zambia

Abstract

This paper examines whether computer-assisted instruction has a positive impact on the literacy and numeracy skills of early grade students. An educational intervention implemented in Zambia integrated technology into classroom activity in order to mitigate weaknesses in teaching skills and address specific unmet student needs. Using a difference-in-difference combined with inverse propensity weights, results show that students’ numeracy and literacy skills are not significantly different from untreated community or government school students. At a third of the cost, the programme is the most cost-effective means of educating children in this poor region of Zambia.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to David Seidenfeld, Reshma Patel, Michael Weiss, Daniel Mwanza, and Christian Winters for their help in conducting this study as well as their helpful comments and suggestions on various drafts of the paper. All remaining errors are ours. We also thank numerous enumerators who conducted the surveys for their hard work and dedication. Funding for this independent impact evaluation was provided by Impact Network. Data for key variables and relevant code can be made available upon request.

Disclosure statement

The authors would like to report a potential conflict of interest in the form of resources and financial support received to conduct the study from the NGO Impact Network, which funds the evaluated eLearning 360 programme. Impact Network provided fees for consulting as well as travel to the corresponding author. However, the study design, data collection, and analysis were all conducted independently and without the influence of Impact Network.

Supplementary Materials are available at https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2017.1366454

Notes

1. For a comprehensive review of the Western literature on the effects of technology use on cognitive development and school outcomes, please see Koeppl et al. (2001), and, for a more recent overview, OECD (2008).

2. For a comprehensive review of the development country literature on the effects of CAI and other educational inputs, please see Glewwe, Hanushek, Humpage, and Ravina (2011), McEwan (2015), and Carrasco and Torrecilla (2012) for the Latin American context.

3. Studies that have assessed the effect of interventions that provide CAI as a complementary input (remedial sessions, after-school programmes, home computers) find that students significantly increased test scores (Lai et al., 2015; Malamud & Pop-Eleches, 2011; Lai et al., 2016).

4. However, students do not receive individual tablets, so that this programme is not designed to address individual student learning needs.

5. Five schools were constructed between 2009 and 2011, and the programme was later extended to another five pre-existing community schools in the area.

6. Please find the details of the power calculations in Section A in the Supplementary Materials.

7. A more in-depth discussion about this issue can be made available upon request.

8. More information on individual skill tests can be made available upon request.

9. For this analysis, the ‘impact’ of government schools in comparison to community schools is computed following the same empirical approach.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Impact Network International, Inc. [P.O. Box 231301, New York, NY, 10023.].