How can EdTech improve educational production in k-12 schools in developing countries?

I have been working with the RightWalk Foundation (RWF) for the past few years to answer this question. During this period, I have visited numerous k-12 schools in Uttar Pradesh, India,?and interacted with teachers and administrators on one side and students and their parents on the other. Indeed, it has been a great learning experience for me.

I want to reflect on and share my learning about the state of k-12 schooling in India. Although I am writing based on my exposure to Indian schools, they would generalize to k-12 schools in most developing countries.

I will synthesize my learnings into four posts sequentially organized as below;

-?????????Role of EdTech in resource-constrained k-12 schools

-?????????The state of EdTech deployment in Indian schools – what is amiss.

-?????????A technologist’s view of educational production in k-12 schools.

-?????????Putting it all together: The EPInc App - an integrated EdTech platform for educational production in k-12 schools.

Role of EdTech in resource-constrained k-12 schools ??

It is a myth that low-income and less-educated parents don’t value education and don’t aspire to educate their children. Thanks to government policies, such as Universal Elementary Education and the Right to Education Act, and the untiring effort of NGOs such as RWF, children from underprivileged families have access to schools. Besides school enrollment, parents from lower socioeconomic strata also invest in their children’s educational activities outside schools, even with limited means. In a study with Sharique Hasan of Duke University and others, I compare the educational investment of low-income households of winners and losers of the Right to Education lottery in Uttar Pradesh, India (Bano et al. 2020). While the lottery-winning underprivileged children get admission to quality private schools, the losers don’t. We found that families of lottery winners engage in significantly more learning-oriented behaviors, such as investing in coaching classes, educational materials at home, and siblings’ education. The mushroom growth of k-12 schools and afterschool private coaching in urban and rural India is a testament to this increased educational aspiration of the large population of lower socioeconomic families.

Although the demand for education has surged, a commensurate supply of quality education has not materialized. There is a large variance in the educational (teaching and other supporting) resources in Indian schools/coaching centers, with most falling in the poor category. Thus, while school enrollments have improved, most students still receive substandard learning in inadequately provided schools in India.

So the next relevant question is: How do we supply quality k-12 education?

Emerging information and communication technology (ICT) applications in education – called EdTech – can provide a solution. EdTech applications can augment existing educational resources to remedy learning in resource-constrained educational environments. Numerous studies have shown that EdTech applications, such as computer-assisted learning (CAL), personalized instructions & practice, and computer-assisted instructions, can improve student learning in Indian schools (Banerjee et al. 2007, Muralidharan et al. 2019, Lindon 2008). Educational researchers worldwide have designed and tested various EdTech-based interventions to improve educational production in k-12 schools. The detailed findings of these research studies can be found in Bulman and Fairlie (2016), Escueta et al. (2020), and Muralidharan et al. (2019). These research findings unequivocally attest to the potential of EdTech in remedying the poor learning outcomes in k-12 schools, especially those with limited educational resources.

One may be skeptical about large-scale EdTech deployment in Indian schools, as it would require massive investments in devices and network infrastructure. However, rapidly decreasing costs of mobile devices and network coverages in India provide a viable alternative. Amit Mehra of UT Dallas and I designed an algorithm for generating personalized homework questions, which can be implemented in text format on inexpensive mobile phones or tablets. We compared students’ performance receiving algorithm-generated personalized versus traditional homework in a field study on a few residential schools in Hyderabad, India (Kumar and Mehra 2018). Our findings indicate significantly higher standardized test scores for students receiving personalized homework. This study illustrates how an inexpensive EdTech deployment can substantially improve students’ learning in resource-constrained k-12 schools.

Notwithstanding several compelling research evidence favoring EdTech, the EdTech deployment in hardware and software is quite limited in Indian schools. While there is some EdTech adoption in high-quality and recognized schools, it is nonexistent in less-reputed schools, primarily catering to children from low-income families. This trend is especially problematic because EdTech could benefit these schools more in overcoming their limited resources. Even though many highly rated schools have the required hardware (computers and network connectivity) and some software applications, their utilization is far from optimal.

In the next post, I will discuss the issues with the supply of k-12 education-related EdTech in India.

Here is a quick sneak peek into some of the topics I will discuss in the next post

-?????????Most EdTech applications are B2C – developed for individual students.

-?????????EdTech applications are designed to help if students exert the requisite effort.

-?????????EdTech applications are standalone solutions focusing on only a part of complete educational production in k-12 schools.

References :

Banerjee, A., E. Duflo, E., S. Cole, and L. Linden, 2007. Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India, Quarterly Journal of Economics. 122(3) pp. 1235-1264.

Bano, Samina and Hasan, Sharique and Kumar, Amod and Kumar, Anuj, Educational Inclusion and Behavioral Spillovers at Home (May 12, 2020). Available at SSRN:?https://ssrn.com/abstract=3599251?or?https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3599251

Bulman, G., R. W. Fairlie. (2016). Technology and Education: Computers, Software, and the Internet. Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 5, 239-280, available at https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63459-7.00005-1

Escueta, M., Nickow, A. J., Oreopoulos, P., & Quan, V. (2020). Upgrading education with technology: Insights from experimental research. Journal of Economic Literature, 58(4), 897- 996.

Kumar, Anuj and Mehra, Amit, Personalized Education at Scale: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment in India (August 10, 2018). Available at SSRN:?https://ssrn.com/abstract=2756059?or?https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2756059

Linden, L. L.,2008, “Complement or substitute? The effect of technology on student achievement in India,” Unpublished manuscript. Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). Cambridge, MA.

Muralidharan, K., A. Singh, and A. J. Ganimian. 2019. “Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India.” American Economic Review, Vol. 109(4): 1426-1460

?