Information and Communication Technologies

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.

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.

This case study was selected by the Digital Principles for Development as a model illustrating the principles of "design with the user in mind" and "be data driven".

Article published in the IJEDICT, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2017). Published Abstract: "Previous large-scale education technology interventions have shown only modest impacts on student achievement. Building on results from an earlier randomized controlled trial of three different applications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on primary education in Kenya, the Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity developed the National Tablets Program. The National Tablets Program is integrated into the Tusome activity by providing tablets to each of more than 1,200 instructional coaches in the country to use when they visit teachers. This enables a national database of classroom instructional quality, which is used by the education system to monitor overall education quality. The tools provided on the tablets are designed to help coaches increase the quality of their instructional support to teachers, and deepen the shallow accountability structures in Kenya’s education system. Using results of a national survey, we investigated the ability of the National Tablets Program to increase the number of classroom observations done by coaches and to improve student learning outcomes. Survey results showed high levels of tablet program utilization, increased accountability, and improvements in learning outcomes. We share recommendations regarding large-scale ICT interventions and literacy programs.

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 presentation was delivered by Wendi Ralaingita at the Open Learning Exchange (OLE) conference in Kathmandu, Nepal (November 2017). It provides an overview of RTI's evidence-based approach to ICT integration, based largely on the Improvement Science literature, particularly Edward Deming. Describes uses of Tangerine open-source software for teacher coaching (Tangerine:Tutor) and classroom continuous assessment (Tangerine:Class) as well as hearing and vision screening tools integrated with EGRA and EGMA assessments.

This is a presentation about Tangerine:Class, which was delivered at the 2016 Pacific Circle Consortium in Saipan.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded an investigation of the effective use of information and communication technology (ICT) in rural areas of Nepal, Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Samoa. In these areas, the multidimensional elements of poverty diminish access to and the quality of education for the poorest people. The study assessed the potential for ICT, combined with training, to improve these education factors for people whose educational opportunities are severely limited. In Bangladesh, the focus was on creating an opportunity for school-based in-service teacher training with the support of mobile communications technology. RTI equipped a cluster of 10 schools with mobile telephones that had advanced multimedia and communications features. A standard 2-week face-to-face training was converted to 6-weeks distance mode, and a pair of teachers from each school completed the course using print materials, practical school-level exercises, and communication on a regular basis with trainers and teacher trainees in other schools. The results show that the distance mode can be as effective as face-to-face training, and it is the strongly preferred mode by training participants.