In-School Supervised EdTech Support Produces Massive Learning Gains: A Khan Academy Field Experiment in India

VoxEU column from FOS Affiliate Philip Oreopoulos and co-authors illuminating what drives effective EdTech use in schools.

Personalised tutoring is known to improve student performance, but effective tutoring programmes are expensive and difficult to scale. Computer-assisted learning could offer tutoring-like personalisation at far lower cost. This column examines the effects of a mathematics improvement programme in Indian government boarding schools. Results were disappointing where teachers were expected to implement the programme, but schools that were provided with staff dedicated to implementation saw much more engagement that translated into productive learning. As governments invest in educational recovery following pandemic-related learning loss, the question is not simply which technologies to adopt but how to build organisational structures that guarantee implementation fidelity.
 
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Link to NBER working paper