Impact of technology use on student learning outcomes: Evidence from a large-scale experiment in India

Abstract

One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-4) adopted by the United Nations focuses on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all. Most research on impact of technology on learning outcomes depends on designs that require low student-to-computer ratio and extensive retraining of teachers. These requirements make the designs difficult to implement on a large scale and hence are limited in terms of inclusivity and ability to ‘provide equitable opportunity for all’. Our paper is the first to evaluate an intervention design that is aimed at dealing with these concerns. We conduct a large-scale randomised field experiment in 1823 rural government schools in India that uses technology-aided teaching to replace one-third of traditional classroom teaching. Even with high student-to-computer ratios and minimal teacher training, we observe a positive impact on student learning outcomes. The study thus presents a low cost, resource-light design, which can be implemented in a developing country on a large scale to address the problem of poor learning outcomes, thereby making the intervention inclusive and equitable in line with the spirit of SDG-4.