Some of my works
Where there is no school: Using Radio and Mobile Technologies to support Education in North-East Nigeria
Technology Enhanced Learning for All (TELA Project) funded by USAID, Nigeria - August 2015 - December 2016
I led the Technology Enhanced Learning for All (TELA) project - a major education emergency response project in North-Eastern Nigeria. The project was developed and implemented as a proof of concept, to show the impact of a blend of communication technologies on learning within the context of a complex emergency, where there are no schools. 22,000 mainly displaced children in Adamawa State, NE Nigeria were divided into three constellations or groups using a matched randomization technique. In the first Constellation, participants were exposed only to the radio programs; in the second Constellation, participants were exposed to an extra lesson on tablet computers (or mobile classroom) once a month in addition to the radio lessons; in the third Constellation, participants were exposed to extra lessons on tablet computers twice a month in addition to the radio lessons. Before the children were exposed to the programs, we conducted baseline standardized Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA) tests to ascertain their literacy and numeracy competences respectively. After six months of exposure, we conducted endline tests on the same sample using EGRA and EGMA and averaged the improvement rates of the respective subtasks to obtain the overall improvement scores of participants across the three constellations. We observed an average improvement of 99.1% in EGRA (literacy) scores and an average improvement of 97.2% in EGMA (numeracy) scores across constellations. There were significant variances across Constellations which show the relative impact of typologies of interventions adopted. Findings indicate that radio and mobile technologies can indeed provide a swift response to the educational crises in northeast Nigeria and in post-conflict societies in general. The nature of instructional radio and technologies has a direct consequence on learning outcomes. In producing instructional radio contents for OSCs, a core objective should be to increase the love for learning, particularly in societies where there are no schools.
Collaborators: Dr. Margee Ensign, Dr. Fidelis Ndeh-Che, Dr. Grace Malgwi.