Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India

84 Pages Posted: 12 Dec 2016 Last revised: 19 Feb 2023

See all articles by Karthik Muralidharan

Karthik Muralidharan

University of California, San Diego (UCSD)

Abhijeet Singh

University of Oxford; University of Oxford

Alejandro Ganimian

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)

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Date Written: December 2016

Abstract

We present experimental evidence on the impact of a personalized technology-aided after-school instruction program on learning outcomes. Our setting is middle-school grades in urban India, where a lottery provided winning students with a voucher to cover program costs. We find that lottery winners scored 0.36σ higher in math and 0.22σ higher in Hindi relative to lottery losers after just 4.5-months of access to the program. IV estimates suggest that attending the program for 90 days would increase math and Hindi test scores by 0.59σ and 0.36σ respectively. We find similar absolute test score gains for all students, but the relative gain was much greater for academically-weaker students because their rate of learning in the control group was close to zero. We show that the program was able to effectively cater to the very wide variation in student learning levels within a single grade by precisely targeting instruction to the level of student preparation. The program was cost effective, both in terms of productivity per dollar and unit of time. Our results suggest that well-designed technology-aided instruction programs can sharply improve productivity in delivering education.

Suggested Citation

Muralidharan, Karthik and Singh, Abhijeet and Ganimian, Alejandro, Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India (December 2016). NBER Working Paper No. w22923, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2883960

Karthik Muralidharan (Contact Author)

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) ( email )

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Abhijeet Singh

University of Oxford ( email )

Nuffield College
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Oxford, OX1 1NF
United Kingdom

University of Oxford ( email )

OX1 1DW
Oxford
United Kingdom

Alejandro Ganimian

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) ( email )

E60-246
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
United States

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