Your search
Results 45 resources
-
Key words: parental education engagement; caregiver engagement; nudges; text messages; schooling; learning; Ghana; gender In this study we evaluate a digital intervention to improve low-literate caregivers’ engagement with their children’s education and development in rural Ghana during the Covid-19 pandemic. The programme was a text-message-based behavioural change intervention for parents / caregivers that aimed to improve caregiver engagement in children’s educational activities,...
-
This Rapid Evidence Review (RER) provides an overview of existing research on the use of mobile phone-based messaging (including SMS, and messaging through apps such as WhatsApp) to support education in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This topic was chosen as the focus for a RER in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and school closures, as this form of technology has been adopted as part of some countries’ methods of providing continuing education during closures and disruption. As...
-
This Learning Brief is part of the EdTech Hub Learning Brief Series, providing practical resources for people working to improve the use of technology in education. In this brief, we look at the behaviour change strategy of leveraging concise messages at strategic decision points (i.e., ‘nudging’) to influence the behaviour of a recipient towards a desired outcome. We focus on EdTech Hub’s work concerning nudge messaging. It builds on work from messaging interventions in Ghana and Kenya,...
-
Behavioral nudges have been shown to increase student attendance and grades across a variety of settings. In low- and middle-income countries, these effects are often mediated by parents showing up in school to a greater extent, ultimately monitoring teachers more closely. As such, could nudges improve educational outcomes even under remote learning? In particular, could they prevent at least part of the dramatic learning losses in the context of COVID-19, which left billions of children...
-
An output of the EdTech Hub, https://edtechhub.org/
-
Using a cluster-randomized control trial with 18, 256 high-school students across 87 schools in the State of Goiás, Brazil, this paper documents that behavioral nudges, sent through text messages to students or their caregivers during remote learning in the context of COVID-19, significantly increased test scores in a standardized assessment test conducted with high-school seniors on the following year. Impacts were positive across the entire test score distribution, but nudges increased...
-
Deploying design-based, mixed-methods research, the study Raising Readers (Phase 1) explores how technology can be best used to strengthen parent and carer engagement with children’s reading in Kenya. In close collaboration with Worldreader, a digital reading organisation, five co-designed modalities (parental training, feedback loops, nudges/messaging, incentives, and reading celebrations) were tested in 14 schools across Nairobi and Kiambu counties over 12 weeks in 2022. The intervention...
-
In Northern Ghana, Wunni Sabo's decision to prioritise his daughter's education, inspired by nudge messaging, is helping to spark a movement for learning. Click to read this story of change.
-
While recent evidence from Brazil and Ivory Coast suggests that SMS messages to nudge parents' engagement in their children's education have large effects on educational outcomes, the Covid-19 pandemic raises additional concerns. In particular, learning deficits and school dropouts are likely to increase following school shutdowns, especially among vulnerable populations such as older girls who need to work to support their families or due to early marriage, childbearing and adolescent...
-
Randomized control trial testing impacts of SMS messages to suggest activities that promote social-emotional development at home and to encourage engagement with remote instruction, variants of these messages that have a gender-parity focus, and the duration of these messages (3 months vs. 6 months)
-
Although socioeconomic disparities in college enrollment have declined, gaps in college completion persist by income and geography. We investigate a text messaging campaign in West Virginia, which addressed informational barriers and behavioral obstacles to college persistence by providing college students with simplified information, encouragement, and access to individualized advising. Using descriptive and matching methods, we find participating students were more likely to remain...
-
Do nudge interventions that have generated positive impacts at a local level maintain efficacy when scaled state or nationwide? What specific mechanisms explain the positive impacts of promising smaller-scale nudges? We investigate, through two randomized controlled trials, the impact of a national and state-level campaign to encourage students to apply for financial aid for college. The campaigns collectively reached over 800,000 students, with multiple treatment arms to investigate...
-
Do nudge interventions that have generated positive impacts at a local level maintain efficacy when scaled state or nationwide? What specific mechanisms explain the positive impacts of promising smaller-scale nudges? We investigate, through two randomized controlled trials, the impact of a national and state-level campaign to encourage students to apply for financial aid for college. The campaigns collectively reached over 800,000 students, with multiple treatment arms to investigate...
-
The impacts of COVID-19 reach far beyond the hundreds of lives lost to the disease; in particular, the pre-existing learning crisis is expected to be magnified during school shutdown. Despite efforts to put distance learning strategies in place, the threat of student dropouts, especially among adolescents, looms as a major concern. Are interventions to motivate adolescents to stay in school effective amidst the pandemic? Here we show that, in Brazil, nudges via text messages to high-school...
-
Whether SMS-based nudge interventions can increase parent engagement and improve child learning outcomes across diverse contexts such as rural West Africa is unknown. We conducted a school-randomized trial to test the impacts of an audio or text-message intervention (two messages per week for one school year) to parents and teachers of second and fourth grade students (N = 100 schools, 2246 students) in Cote d’Ivoire. Schools were randomly assigned to have messages sent to (i) parents only,...
-
Text-message based parenting programs have proven successful in improving parental engagement and preschoolers’ literacy development. The tested programs have provided a combination of (a) general information about important literacy skills, (b) actionable advice (i.e.,specific examples of such activities), and (c) encouragement. The regularity of the texts – each week throughout the school year – also provided nudges to focus parents’ attention on their children. This study seeks to...
-
This document presents the structure and questions used for a telephone survey which was undertaken with a sample of learners who use the M-Shule platform and their caregivers, in Kenya, during July and August 2022. An output of the EdTech Hub, https://edtechhub.org
-
To better understand the use of EdTech interventions as part of response to the Covid-19 pandemic, EdTech Hub commissioned ten small-scale research studies in five low- and middle-income countries: Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, and Sierra Leone. This paper includes insight into research methodologies across these studies, with particularly interesting findings on how EdTech effectiveness is being measured. A semi-structured thematic analysis further provides insights in relation to...
-
An output of the EdTech Hub, https://edtechhub.org Our research indicates that guidance and resources are necessary but insufficient in equipping caregivers to support their children’s learning. In Sprint 1, caregiver confidence and community emerged as important enablers of home learning. In our interviews, caregivers communicated how they felt limited by their lack of or outdated education. Global interventions indicate that reinforcing a sense of community for caregivers and enabling them...
Filter by our tags
Learners
Educators
Education systems
- Access (4)
- Assessment (1)
- Curriculum and educational content (3)
- Educational data (4)
- Equity (5)
- Governance (1)
- Monitoring and evaluation (3)
- Quality (2)
- System readiness (1)
Hardware and modality
- App-based (5)
- Audio (3)
- Blended learning (4)
- Desktop and laptop computers (2)
- Distance education (6)
- Online learning (2)
- Open educational resources (1)
- Personalised learning (3)
- Phone (9)
- Printed teaching and learning materials (3)
- Radio (5)
- Social media and messaging (7)
- Tablet (5)
- Television (3)
- Video (2)
Educational level
- Adult education (1)
- Early childhood and pre-primary (1)
- Higher education (1)
- Informal education (1)
- Primary education (8)
- Secondary education (6)
Within-country contexts
- Fragile and conflict affected contexts (4)
- Low connectivity and/or electricity (8)
- Peri-urban (3)
- Rural (4)
- Urban (3)
Publisher and type
- Country summaries and case studies (3)
- Evidence Review (3)
- Helpdesk Response (7)
- In partnership with UNICEF (2)
- Learning Brief (2)
- Methodology publication (1)
- Other type (1)
- Policy Brief (1)
- Position Paper (2)
- Rapid Evidence Review (2)
- Research Instruments and Tools (1)
- Technical Report (5)
- Working Paper (4)
Research method
Topic Area
Focus Countries
- Bangladesh (1)
- Ghana (2)
- Kenya (4)
- Pakistan (3)
- Sierra Leone (2)
Publication year
- Between 2000 and 2024 (43)
- Unknown (2)