The effects of technology-mediated personalised learning on students’ academic achievement and engagement

• In Event: ICT and Education (I)

Proposal

Creating effective learning environments for students and teachers has been an ongoing challenge across the continuum in education (Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007). Educators and policymakers have wrestled with identifying effective teacher interventions (henceforth “professional development” (PD) programs) that translate their impact on teaching effectiveness and also on student achievement outcomes. Traditionally, PD programs have been used as a mechanism to improve the quality of classroom instruction and student achievement; however, there has been a lack of well-documented empirical studies that provide evidence on the impact of PD programs on teachers’ knowledge and behaviors, in addition to student achievement. Prior PD interventions have relied on single-shot, one-day workshops that have generated superficial and incoherent effects on teaching effectiveness (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Wilson & Berne, 1999; Pianta, 2011).

This study aims to evaluate the effect of a novel approach to teacher PD interventions by incorporating a ‘High Touch High Tech’ learning model. While ‘High Tech’ refers to computer-assisted technology to provide asynchronous personalized learning and assessment to students, ‘High Touch’ refers to synchronous learning in the classroom facilitated by teachers to focus their teaching and resources on promoting project-based learning and active learning in small groups. By adopting clustered randomized controlled trials, we evaluate the HTHT intervention in Uruguay on teacher effectiveness and student cognitive outcomes (math scores) and non-cognitive outcomes (GRIT, collaboration, and communication skills.). We collected data from 99 schools, 114 teachers, and 2,002 5th Grade students in Uruguay, which consists of treatment and control groups for the intervention. All participating schools and students have access to a computer-assisted learning platform for mathematics (High Tech). Teachers in the treatment group received training through workshops, instructional materials, and mentoring, including classroom observations and feedback throughout the academic year (High Touch), whereas teachers in the control group followed standard and normally accepted practices.

Results indicated that HTHT intervention increased individualized use of computer-assisted learning by 47%. Students in treatment groups had significantly greater completion rates for episodes provided by the computer-assisted learning platform. Notably, HTHT intervention improved student academic performance in math by up to 0.80 SD (p < 0.001). Students in the intervention groups who completed higher number of educational episodes demonstrated significantly greater improvement in mathematics performance, yielding an effect size of up to 0.80 SD. Results remained consistent, even after controlling for school- and student-level characteristics. Our findings highlight that the HTHT intervention integrating both synergistic components of High Touch and High Tech can lead to improved student performance, while demonstrating computer-assisted personalized learning or teacher PD interventions alone does not independently lead to improved student academic performance. This is the first large-scale experimental study exploring the effectiveness of the HTHT model and policy implications for the scale-up of such intervention will be discussed.

Author

• Janice H Kim, University of Glasgow