This week at World Bank EduTech

week of November 9, 2020

• announced upcoming webinar: Connecting the dots: the European experience putting digital skills into action (November 17);
• shared the recording of the latest UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank webinar series on the reopening of schools; and
• shared recommended edtech reading highlighting some findings regarding additional obstacles that girls face to access and engage adequately in remote learning strategies as well as gender gaps in digital skills.

Connecting the dots: the European experience putting digital skills into action (Tuesday, November 17, 10am DC time)

In a rapidly changing and increasingly digital economy, countries confront the challenge of providing more learning opportunities for women and men to develop relevant skills and life-long learning to compete and thrive. In this context, digital skills have become essential for life and work and are the foundation for employability and accessing information and support throughout our careers. The European Digital Competence Framework, also known as DigComp, offers a tool to improve citizen’s digital competence.

Join us in this interesting discussion with the team behind DigComp and one of the actionable case studies, the Ikanos project, who used DigComp to design a self-assessment test and various tools and services to develop digital competence. Join the webinar on November 17 on Zoom.

For more information:

• DigComp 2.1: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens
• DigComp at Work
• Ikanos project
• Ikanos self-assessment tool

Webinar: What have we learnt? Overview of national responses to COVID-19

As part of the coordinated global education response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO, UNICEF, and the World Bank have conducted a survey on National Education Responses to COVID-19 School Closures. In this webinar, the results from these two rounds of data collection are showcased, sharing the lessons learnt from government responses to school closures from pre-primary to secondary education. You can access the recording of the event here. You can find the full report, find it here.

Recommended Reading

Reading focused on highlighting some findings regarding additional obstacles that girls face to access and engage adequately in remote learning strategies as well as gender gaps in digital skills.

Here we’ll also share some emerging EdTech interventions targeted at girls, to overall students, as well as teachers and parents that may help achieve equitable remote learning for all.

There is a gender gap on digital skills. An analysis at household level in 8 Sub-Saharan countries (Amaro et al, 2020), identified that i) fewer girls than boys possess digital skills (for example in Ghana 16% of adolescent boys possess digital skills vs. 7% of girls), ii) for girls attending schools is not associated with higher digital skills, and iii) even when there’s a computer at home girls benefit less (for example in DRC, 46% of boys with computers at home use them at least once a week vs 24% of girls). Moreover, the proportion of women who use the internet globally is 12% lower than the proportion of men, this gap increases to 33% in less developed countries (Cobo, 2019).

Societal/gender norms may explain why girls have unequal access to remote learning and less opportunities to build digital skills. Caretakers might be wary of allowing daughters to use devices due to concerns for they safety or to prevent them to access content that may contradict their community’s values (James et al, 2018). Additionally, girls may have to shoulder more household work or spend more time tending to siblings and this increased workload diminishes their time to study and engage with any modality of remote learning.

Proving girls with access to education was already a problem before COVID-19 (in low income countries less than two thirds of girls complete their primary education) and dropping out of school makes girls more likely to marry as children, have a baby before their turn 18, diminishes their future earnings as well as their agency and decision making abilities (Wodon et al., 2018; World Bank, 2020)

How can EdTech help in keeping girls at school and mitigating the additional obstacles they face?

1. Let’s keep teachers and parents informed and shift gender norms: Interventions targeted at teachers or parents using SMS are both low-cost and low-tech and can be used to reduce parents’ information gaps and improve student attendance (in Chile: Berlinski et al, 2017), improve teachers’ attendance through monitoring SMS which resulted in increased motivation of both teachers and students as well as decreased rates of likelihood of student dropout (In Niger: Aker & Ksoll, 2018). Additionally, text messaging intervention may benefit from differentiated and personalized messages which may increase trust and encourage parents by providing specific information on their child’s learning gaps (in the US: Doss et al, 2017). A recent intervention in Ghana is introducing SMS to improve parents’ engagement in educational activities, and promote gender parity in education through messages promoting girls’ education and addressing some common stereotypes around gender roles during the school closures (Tsinigio & Samanhyia, forthcoming).
2. Let’s check the content used for remote learning: Materials used in remote and blended learning (print, radio scripts, online platforms, TV) should at the minimum not reinforce gender stereotypes among students and teachers. While changing gender norms and perceptions is not an easy task, research in Nepal, Uganda and Vietnam provides some lessons on how to address biases regarding child marriage and girl’s education. Interventions that have incorporated media content targeted to empower girls and adolescents include Ubongo kids which has TV and radio content on gender rights that can be paired with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) to share reminders and engage parents and children in adaptive quizzes regarding the content of their programming. For more information on radio and TV content design as well as some Bank programs to empower girls, take a look at our EduRadio and EduTV knowledge packs.
3. Let’s monitor remote learning attendance and students’ safe return to school: In times of crisis, investing in “no regret policies” such as enhancing standard data collection on attendance (and disaggregate by gender), through phone surveys (see WB’s high intensity phones surveys to track impacts of COVID-19, for example) might help countries learn and act as needed to avoid dropouts of girls (and boys) (Dercon, 2020; Mendez Acosta & Evans, 2020). Even if this piece is centered on girls, boys are also at risk, they may be forced to work and leave their studies to support their families (ODI, 2016).
4. Let’s use adaptive learning to remediate learning losses: EdTech interventions using adaptive software as part of remedial approaches, where the capacity (connectivity, if necessary, and availability of devices) allow for this, can accelerate learning outcomes even for the most vulnerable populations. Evidence from an impact evaluation of the Mindspark software in India (which uses an extensive item-level database of test questions and student responses to benchmark initial learning levels of every student and then personalize the material being delivered to match the level and rate of progress made by each student) finds absolute test score gains for both girls and boys (Muralidharan, et al, 2019).