Customised E-Learning Platforms

AbstractMore than 617 million children and adolescents lack the basic reading and mathematics skills required to live healthy and productive lives. Malawi ranks particularly poorly, with an average pupil to teacher ratio of 77:1 and a 50% dropout rate among primary school children. Established in 2013, the Unlocking Talent initiative uses e-Learning technology to help overcome educational challenges. It equips touch-screen tablets with customisable software that delivers lessons through multisensory experiences (e.g. pictures, sound, video and animation). Throughout Malawi, small groups of students in public primary schools have accessed these tablets during weekly sessions on-site. This case study describes a series of evaluations of this e-Learning technology in Malawi, conducted in tandem with experiments in other countries (including the United Kingdom, Brazil, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia). Following a pilot evaluation to assess the feasibility of e-Learning in raising learning outcomes, multiple large-scale randomised control trials were conducted. Learning gains hold across multiple cohorts of children and across different countries, generating more than a 3-month advantage in basic mathematics and more than a 4-month advantage in basic reading on average. The intervention also bridges gender gaps in mathematics skills attainment in Malawi.