The Effect of Digitalization on School Children Calculated for the First Time
The HSE Institute of Education together with Yandex completed Russia’s first large-scale experiment assessing the impact of online technology on primary school students’ performance in school. The researchers concluded that online completion of assignments help improve mathematical literacy, particularly among underachieving students.
The study was carried out by the International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis
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Over 6,000 third-graders and their teachers from 343 schools in Novosibirsk Oblast and Altay Krai took part in the study
This research project was the first in contemporary Russia to use the ‘gold standard’ for assessing the impact on school education, namely a large-scale experiment. The participants were randomly placed in different experimental conditions. In ordinary interim assessments, the effect in question can’t be ‘cleared’ from many other side factors, and as a result, it is often difficult to determine the real reasons behind certain results. Random distribution helps solve this problem.
In the experimental groups, school students did homework in math and Russian using Yandex.Uchebnik (Yandex.Textbook), which includes over 35,000 assignments for elementary school, on smartphones and computers. The control group did homework in a more traditional way. Psychometrics researchers from the Institute of Education compared the results of both groups in two rounds of tests with iPIPS+, a complex of modern tools.
The researchers’ conclusions dispelled some myths about the digitalization of schools.
‘First, completion of the assignments online impacts the performance positively, and the school students maintain a higher interest in their studies. Second, the new technology may be most useful for underachieving students, who demonstrated the highest improvement in results. Third, we have not monitored any additional workload for teachers due to the introduction of online assignments: they did not spend more time on preparing for lessons and checking the homework. At the same time, they started using some other digital resources in their work more often, in addition to those suggested in the experiment,’ said Andrey Zakharov, Head of the International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis.
Isak Froumin
Head of the Institute of Education
This study is unique and highly significant. Such complicated experiments help us understand what really works in education and what does not work. The importance of this research is particularly obvious in light of the fact that large-scale changes in education like digitalization have an impact on all families and are often costly. This means that decisions here should be made using evidence-based educational policy. Together with our colleagues from Kazan Federal University, we are discussing the launch of an information platform about ‘reliable’ innovations in education.
The HSE Institute of Education has become one of the world’s leading platforms developing psychometrics – a research field that helps properly design assessment tools, find the best forms of their implementation, and validly interpret their results. The Institute has a master’s programme and a research centre in this field that areheaded by Professor Elena Kardanova.
The Institute also carries out comprehensive research on the development, prospects, and problems of education digitalization in Russia. Particularly, this year, a new master’s programme, Digital Transformation of EducationRussian-Chinese conference on digital transformation in education will take place at the Institute of Education.
Digitalization of school education is entering a new level as prominent IT players get more involved. Since its launch, Yandex.Uchebnik has planned not only developing its product, but also carrying out fundamental research together with leading research teams.
‘Importantly, the outcomes of this effort will be useful for all parties involved—teachers, researchers, and the Uchebnik team—for its further development,’ said Evgeny Lurie, Product Director of Yandex.Uchebnik.
We are proud to have been able to implement this big fifteen-month project together with the Institute of Education
According to Evgeny Lurie, real field research is hard work. ‘The project involved dozens of professionals from our two organizations, as well as local coordinators and education development institutions.’
See also:
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74%
of Russian parents help their school-age children with their homework, or even do it with them.
It’s More Useful to Compare Students from Different Regions of a Single Country than from Different Countries
Professor Martin Carnoy of Stanford University and visiting professor at the Higher School of Economics, and Tatiana Khavenson, Research Fellow at the HSE Institute of Education, were among the authors of the report ‘An Analysis of the Impact of Education Policies on Student Achievement in the United States’, which was recently presented in Washington, DC. The key provisions of this report are of use when it comes to analyzing the situation in Russian education.
24%
of teachers believe that skills in the field of computer and information technologies are what they lack most when it comes to working effectively.