Presentation by Carmen Strigel, Director, Technology for Education and Training, RTI International. Delivered at the RTI Panel Discussion "Vision and Hearing Screening in LMICs: Challenges and Opportunities" held Wed, September 26, 2018 in Washington, D.C. For related resources, see also the topic "Assessments" using the "by Topic" link in the menu above.

Presentation by Kristen Layton, Director, Strategy, Innovation and Learning Unit, Perkins International. Delivered at the RTI Panel Discussion "Vision and Hearing Screening in LMICs: Challenges and Opportunities" held Wed, September 26, 2018 in Washington, D.C. For related resources, see also the topic "Assessments" using the "by Topic" link in the menu above.

Interest inmeasuring executive function skills in young children in lowand middle-income country contexts has been stymied by the lack of assessments that are both easy to deploy and scalable. This study reports on an initial effort to develop a tablet-based battery of executive function tasks, which were designed and extensively studied in the United States, for use in Kenya. Participants were 193 children, aged 3–6 years old, who attended early childhood development and education centers. The rates of individual task completion were high (65–100%), and 85% of children completed three or more tasks. Assessors indicated that 90% of all task administrations were of acceptable quality. An executive function composite score was approximately normally distributed, despite higher-than-expected floor and ceiling effects on inhibitory control tasks. Children’s simple reaction time (β = –0.20, p = .004), attention-related behaviors during testing (β = 0.24, p = .0005), and age (β = –0.24, p = .0009) were all uniquely related to performance on the executive function composite. Results are discussed as they inform efforts to develop valid and reliable measures of executive function skills among young children in developing country contexts.

This presentation was prepared for UNESCO Mobile Learning Week, 2018. It describes an RTI International internal research program to learn whether mobile gaming can be used to assess soft skills important for employability. The presentation was created by Lee Nordstrum and delivered by Sarah Pouezevara.

Executive Function (EF) refers to a range of cognitive skills that are key to problem solving and a child's ability to “learn how to learn.” These skills experience an important growth period during early childhood; thus, between 2005 and 2010, researches at the University of North Carolina designed a battery of tools to measure these skills in pre-school aged children known as EF Touch. In 2016, RTI International – a research institute dedicated to evidence-based approaches to education policy and practice - identified EF Touch as a unique opportunity to integrate early childhood EF measurement in its battery of existing international education assessment tools. EF Touch was originally developed by UNC in note card format; then adapted to a paper and pencil format; and later transitioned to laptop and touch-screen monitor “station” requiring two assessors and an expensive third party scoring software. Although the laptop mediated approach was an improvement on paper-based administration, it was still clear that this model was not sustainable, portable, or cost effective for large deployment in the low and middle income (LMIC) contexts where RTI most often works – and where very little research on EFs in young children has been thus far conducted). Therefore, RTI sought to adapt Tangerine® - an open source software designed by RTI for low cost, large-scale, offline assessment – for use in the administration of EF Touch. More than 60 organizations worldwide have used Tangerine on tablets to conduct 1,500,000+ surveys in 70 countries and 100 languages. To accommodate the specific requirements of EF Touch, the Tangerine platform needed extensive modification to accommodate the specific needs of EF touch, including new A/V capabilities, unique millisecond time-stamps indicating reaction time, plus the development of complex skip logic commands tailored to individual performance. The resulting Tangerine-mediated battery of EF Touch tasks were designed to remain scientifically rigorous while significantly reducing costs (one assessor, one tablet); increasing scalability in developing country contexts (offline assessment); and reducing the burden of complicated data entry (data uploaded directly to the server). This presentation provides an overview of EF touch, including the adaptation process to Tangerine and recent results from two field deployments in Kenya. The attached presentation does not contain video files to due the attachment size. The full presentation with videos of task demonstrations can be found via the included google drive link.

During 2016/2017, RTI implemented an assistive technology initiative to improve reading instruction in inclusive grade two public school classrooms in 63 schools in five regions of Ethiopia. Project inputs included a smartphone with screening tools for vision and hearing impairment and explicitly accommodated reading lesson plans for reading and writing instruction in mother tongue. The intervention also included a total of 4 days of teacher training and two classroom monitoring visits per teacher. After three months of implementation, teacher attitudes and self-efficacy to inclusive education improved significantly, as did teacher adoption of foundational inclusive practices in the classroom. At the student level, students identified for a potential vision or hearing impairment in intervention classrooms demonstrated similar learning progress compared to their peers without such impairment, although the study found measurable differences in reading achievement between these groups already at baseline. In conclusion, the innovation of using pedagogical support tools on smartphones as assistive technology at the teacher level appeared to have been appropriate for the context of the participating schools in Ethiopia, as well as effective in improving inclusive reading instruction.

RTI International has been honored with a 2018 Digital Edge 50 Award for being a leader in digital innovation. The prestigious award recognizes a new open-source tool recently developed by RTI to measure executive function (EF) skills in pre-school aged children The tool, EF Touch, is administered using Tangerine®, RTI’s open source software that was designed to transform the way teachers, coaches and researchers assess and observe literacy and numeracy teaching and learning.

This case study will highlight practical lesson learned from the use of mobile devices with Tangerine®:Class open-source software for data-informed instructional decision-making from a year-long, rigorous study conducted by RTI International in Kenya. Throughout 2013, twenty-one teachers and 600 pupils used Tangerine:Class on Android tablets in a randomized controlled trial. While the trial was focused on early reading instruction, the applicable lessons learned are also for mathematics and independent of subject matter. Practical findings concern training and support, the logistics of individual pupil assessments in large classrooms; the nature of instructional decision-making; and the use of data and interactions between teachers, headteachers and parents. This is a chapter of an edited book "Mobile Learning and Mathematics" (Crompton, H. and Traxler, J., eds.) available at Amazon.com.