Developing Digitized Tools for LtP ECE Programming

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Integrating digital tools into regular ECE programming to effectively support Learning through Play remains a challenge. Programs such as the LEGO Foundation funded Playful Futures Project (Uganda), Twigire Mumikino (Rwanda) and Funda Udladle Nathi -FUN (South Africa) support play-based early learning to empower children to become creative, engaged and develop the holistic skills that serve them, their communities, and society throughout a lifetime. Led by Plan International, VSO and VVOB-Education for Development respectively, these programs share the experience of using digital tools to iterate and optimize LtP ECE programming. Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) supported these organizations as a learning partner, and applied its Path-to-Scale tool to refine their approaches to enabling LtP in ECE settings, including but not limited to the use of digital tools.

These initiatives aim to strengthen LtP in ECE systems by partnering with stakeholders and governments to scale affordable, quality play-based learning. In our contexts, the LtP and ECE frameworks are in early stages of development, with limited levels of child-centered and developmentally appropriate teaching practices at the ECE level. In each case, organizations have been challenged to introduce new practices to a wide range of stakeholders with little previous exposure to play-based instructional practices.

Each program integrated digitals tools to help implement and refine their approaches to facilitating LtP in ECE settings. Digital tools are potentially powerful vehicles for quickly cutting across levels of the education system or increasing access to key interventions in resource-constrained contexts and are frequently viewed as silver bullets for achieving ‘scale’. However, experiential insights from projects found both challenges and benefits to aligning digital technologies with on-the-ground user experiences and iterating for model optimization.

To best learn about interventions and explore their potential for future scalability, all organizations adopted IPA’s Path-to-Scale framework in their like-minded projects to help foreground early-stage testing, learning by doing, and user experiences with each intervention. Partners conducted learning activities to collect early-stage feedback on implementation effectiveness, gain insights into the interventions' scalability across the wider-system, and eventually, test impact on teacher practices. Gathering early implementation insights by testing and adapting are essential to refine programs before substantial resources are committed towards scaling their implementation and undertaking costly impact evaluations. Partners continually reviewed these experiences, used data to inform program implementation, and retested their approaches in the real-world.

Each partner will present a unique case along the Path-to-Scale; they will illustrate how digital tools proved useful to early-stage learning and scalability of the model. Plan will share how a digital dashboard for classroom observation data from Uganda improved data accessibility and possibility for quick, smart, data-driven project adaptations. VSO will share how content and User Interface of their Teacher App was adapted during piloting with teachers and eventually streamlined with the goal of fitting into the Rwandan Education Board’s national digital platform. VVOB will share how they took a Path to Scale approach in South Africa to bridge gap-analysis to piloting TPD modalities with digital components. The three partner presentations will be supplemented by an overall framing introduction on IPA’s Path to Scale framework.

The session will culminate in a discussion between the panelists, chaired by IPA to bring out the experiences, key transferable takeaways and recommendations for:
-Leveraging digital approaches for resource and capacity constrained contexts
-Influence of tools on attitudes and practices
-Incorporating user experience and feedback from digital tools for improved LtP programming
-Challenges in aligning digital tools across systems and for multiple users while implementing LtP programming
-Utilizing digital tools to improve internal use of monitoring data for program improvement

Sub Unit

• Monitoring and Evaluation SIG

Chair

• Cody Costakis, Innovations for Poverty Action

Individual Presentations

• Prototyping an EdTech Approach to teacher professional development in play-based learning for ECE Teachers in Rwanda - Ruth Kabutembe Mbabazi, VSO

• Playful Futures: Integrating Play and Data for Improved Early Childhood Education - Lucy Barnett, Plan Bornefonden; Maria Andreina Cantele

• Blended teacher professional development modalities for ECD practitioners on Learning through Play in South Africa - Chantal Lenore Snyman, VVOB Education for Development