Putting more computers in schools and homes will do little to improve the quality of education unless there is investment in teacher training and educational software in addition to strong supervision, a recently conducted study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has found.
The findings are detailed in the book Development Connections: Unveiling the Impact of New Information Technologies which will be launched next month. The book analyzes to what degree ICT contributed to the success of 46 development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean in six different areas; finance, health institutions, education, poverty and the environment. Some of the findings, however, were disclosed in a recent release by the IDB.
“There are significant uncertainties surrounding the potential impact of programs that distribute laptops to students for school and home use on a large scale and more evaluations are needed to measure the effectiveness of these interventions,” the release said. “The evidence so far indicates that programs that overlook teacher training and the development of specific software may yield very low returns. Also, rather than doing homework or studying, children with weak adult supervision at home may spend more time using computers in ways that do little to boost their educational achievement,” the release added.
The study comes at a time when the government is pushing its One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) initiative where it plans to distribute 90,000 computers to poor families over a two-year period. The programme, among other things, has been hailed as one that could broaden the educational opportunities of school children of poor families. However, critics of the programme have suggested that putting the computers in the schools would be a more effective way of achieving this aim.
The release, however, noted that giving students computer training one or two hours a week in computer labs has had positive impacts on learning and employment opportunities. This may be a cheaper investment for the region, particularly for countries with limited resources that may yield relatively higher returns: setting up and maintaining a computer lab at school costs approximately $23 per student compared with $217 per student for a program that provides a computer to every child.
It noted too that interventions aimed at increasing access at home should implement mechanisms to ensure proper use. In particular, computers could be preloaded with interactive educational software and certain applications can be automatically launched to stimulate their use. It said too that the use of computer-assisted instruction software in schools to improve learning in mathematics has shown promising results in the region.
“Using ICTs in education can be very costly and may crowd out important alternative programs with relatively higher returns,” said Alberto Chong in the release. Chong coordinated the study. “It is vital for governments to conduct careful evaluations of these initiatives and, particularly, to budget enough resources to train teachers and develop adequate software for students. Countries cannot expect that learning will improve with simply greater access to computers. Quality of use is crucial,” the release said.
Researchers, the release said, conducted randomized control trials in several education projects throughout the region and found that only 14 percent of the projects in the sample strongly benefitted from the adoption of computers and other information and communication technology tools in classrooms.“ Partial benefits were detected in 57 percent of the projects and 29 percent benefitted minimally from having these tools available to students in classrooms.
