4.10 Impacts of CAL on learning: Examples from China and India

CAL is promising, but it should be recognized as a tool for supporting teachers, not replacing them. CAL software has become increasingly popular in education. it can enhance communication among teachers, students, and parents and help teachers and parents identify and use age-appropriate development activities to support student learning (World Bank 2018). The CAL programs that have received the most attention and show the most promise serve as a kind of “intelligent tutoring” (escueta et al. 2017). A recent review of 29 studies that evaluated the impact of these intelligent tutoring CAL programs suggests that these programs show great potential to improve learning outcomes, particularly in mathematics (escueta et al. 2017). Many of these programs may be effective in part because they allow students to learn at their own pace and adapt to students’ knowledge (Muralidharan, Singh, and Ganimian 2016). in other words, these programs allow students to personalize their education. in india, a dynamic CAL program for secondary school students increased math and language scores more than any other intervention tested in both india and elsewhere (box 4.10). nonetheless, this intervention was designed as an afterschool learning program rather than a substitute for in-class instruction (Muralidharan, Singh, and Ganimian 2016). A gaming program in China showed similar results (box 4.10).

BOX 4.10

Impacts of CAL on learning: Examples from China and India

China

in 2011, a cluster-randomized experiment was undertaken in 57 schools in Quinghai, China, to study the impact of a remedial, game-based CAL program on academic and noncognitive outcomes for students in public schools in minority rural areas. The experiment found that the segment of the program that focused on teaching Standard Chinese (Mandarin) after school hours improved the standardized Mandarin scores of the students in the treatment schools by 0.14–0.20 standard deviations, compared with those in the control schools. Moreover, CAL had significant spillover effects on students’ standardized math test scores. The CAL intervention had insignificant positive effects on students’ nonacademic outcomes and metacognition and significant positive effects on students’ self-efficacy of learning Mandarin.

India

A study in urban india looked at the impact of a CAL program called Mindspark. The sample of 619 students was recruited from public middle schools in Delhi. A lottery provided winning students with a voucher to cover the program costs associated with using the program. A key feature of the Mindspark software is its ability to finely benchmark the learning level of every student and dynamically customize the material being delivered to match the level and rate of progress made by each student. A second important feature is its ability to identify patterns of student errors and precisely target content to alleviate conceptual bottlenecks that may be difficult for teachers to diagnose or address at the individual student level in a classroom setting. The results showed that lottery winners (those who used the Mindspark program) scored 0.36 higher in math and 0.22 higher in Hindi relative to lottery losers after just four and half months of access to the program. The study found similar absolute test score gains for all students, but the relative gain was much greater for academically weaker students because the rate of learning in the control group was close to zero. The results suggest that well-designed, technology-aided instruction programs can sharply improve productivity in delivering education.

Sources: Lai et al. 2012; Muralidharan, Singh, and Ganimian 2016.