How Can Technology Improve Learning? Information Technology, Education and Welfare in Niger

教育对经济和社会发展至关重要。然而，全世界有超过7.75亿成年人无法读写任何一种语言（教科文组织，2012年）。这些指标在撒哈拉以南非洲内陆国家尤其低，那里的识字率不到40%。在我们的研究对象尼日尔，只有不到30%的人口识字，男女之间的差异很大。尽管成人教育给个人和社会带来了直接的回报，但成人教育项目是一个被高度忽视的发展干预的切入点。这通常归因于低入学率、高辍学率和快速技能贬值（Romain and Armstrong 1987, Abadzi 1994, Oxenham et al 2002, Ortega and Rodriguez 2008），可能是由于这些技能在日常生活中的相关性有限，或者用母语练习的机会有限。在包括尼日尔在内的许多发展中国家，移动电话覆盖率的广泛增长有可能增加对文盲成年人获得识字和计算技能的激励和便利。通过教学生如何使用手机，成人学习者可以在课外通过发送和接收短消息服务（SMS）、打电话和使用移动货币（m-money）应用程序来练习他们的识字技能，所有这些都需要基本流利地使用手机键盘上的数字、符号和字母。移动电话技术还可以通过允许家庭将技术用于其他目的，例如获取价格和劳动力市场信息以及促进非正式私人转移，从而影响教育回报（Aker和Mbiti， 2010年）。我们的研究团队于2009-2011年在尼日尔进行了一项成功的随机评估（ABC项目），结果表明，通过手机增强成人教育计划，成人教育参与者的读写和数学技能提高了19-25秒，相当于多接受了一年的教育（Aker et al, 2012）。随着时间的推移，这种差异仍然显著，即使学习贬值。在成功试点项目的基础上，本研究将为成人教育项目对尼日尔教育和社会经济成果的影响提供严谨的证据。然而，更重要的是，这项研究将评估信息技术（尤其是移动电话）对学习成果、家庭资产所有权、应对冲击的能力以及农业和非农收入的影响程度。这将通过包括基础教育干预的两种变体来实现。第一个变化将在成人基础教育课程中教授学生如何使用手机，类似于尼日尔之前的试点项目。第二种干预措施还将通过短信服务（SMS）向成人学习者提供教育内容，从而使我们能够衡量信息技术作为远程学习工具的使用程度。除了对成人学习的影响外，本研究还将探讨成人教育对父母对儿童教育成果投资的影响程度，以及教育对家庭内部和村庄内部决策的影响程度。最后，由于该研究将在扩大的研究人群中进行（250个村庄，而试点为117个村庄），我们将能够评估该方法的可扩展性，从而使我们能够直接解决本次提案征集中提出的第一个首要研究问题（“哪些方法最有效地使最贫困人口摆脱贫困，以及在什么条件下这些方法可以在其他地方大规模复制？”）这项研究将通过天主教救济服务（CRS）与塔夫茨大学、渥太华大学、伦敦经济学院和阿卜杜勒·穆穆尼大学的研究人员之间的独特合作来实现。

Education is essential for economic and social development. Yet over 775 million adults worldwide are unable to read and write in any language (UNESCO 2012). These indicators are particularly low in the landlocked countries of sub-Saharan Africa, where literacy rates are less than 40 percent. In Niger, the subject of our study, fewer than 30 percent of the population is literate, with large discrepancies between men and women.Despite the immediate private and social returns to adult education, adult education programs are a highly neglected entry point for development interventions. This is often attributed to low enrollment, high drop-out and rapid skills depreciation (Romain and Armstrong 1987, Abadzi 1994, Oxenham et al 2002, Ortega and Rodriguez 2008), possibly due to the limited relevance of such skills in daily life or limited opportunities to practice in one's native language.The widespread growth of mobile phone coverage in many developing countries, including Niger, has the potential to increase the incentives for and facilitate the acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills by illiterate adults. By teaching students how to use mobile phones, adult learners may be able to practice their literacy skills outside of class by sending and receiving short message services (SMS), making phone calls and using mobile money (m-money) applications, all of which require basic fluency with the numbers, symbols and letters on mobile phone keypads. Mobile phone technology could also affect returns to education by allowing households to use the technology for other purposes, such as obtaining price and labor market information and facilitating informal private transfers (Aker and Mbiti 2010).Our research team ran a successful randomized evaluation in Niger in 2009-2011 (Project ABC) and showed that a mobile phone-enhanced adult education program improved literacy and math skills of adult education participants by 19-25 s.d., equivalent to an additional year of education (Aker et al 2012). This difference remains significant over time, even as learning depreciates. Building upon the successful pilot program, this research will provide rigorous evidence on the impacts of adult education programs on educational and socio-economic outcomes in Niger. Yet more importantly, this research will assess the extent to which information technology - in particular, mobile phones -- can affect learning outcomes and households' asset ownership, ability to deal with shocks and farm and off-farm earnings. This will be achieved by including two variations of the basic education intervention. The first variation will teach students in the basic adult education course how to use mobile phones, similar to a previous pilot program in Niger. The second intervention will also provide educational content to adult learners via short message service (SMS), thereby allowing us to measure the extent to which information technology can be used as a distance-learning tool. In addition to its impacts on adult learning, this research will also investigate the extent to which adult education influences parents' investments in children's educational outcomes and which education affects intra-household and intra-village decision-making. And finally, since the research will be conducted in an expanded study population (250 villages, as compared with 117 in the pilot), we will be able to assess the scalability of the approach, thus allowing us to directly address the first overarching research question set out in this call for proposal ("What approaches are most effective in enabling the poorest to exit and stay out of poverty, and under what conditions can such approaches be replicated elsewhere and at scale?")This research will be achieved through a unique collaboration between Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and researchers at Tufts University, the University of Ottawa, the London School of Economics and the University of Abdoul Moumouni.