Play, Connect and Learn: Using Mobile Phones to Improve Early Grade Reading

Skills at Home
Ms. Ira Joshi
Sesame Workshop India
New Delhi, India

ABSTRACT affordability and accessability of mobile phones in developing

countries offer unique possibilities for supplementing and
Mobile technologies offer great scope and potential for learning enriching education for children, especially those who lack
in countries with moderate income rates, low literacy levels, access to high quailty books or reading materials (Sung, Y et. al,
poor educational opportunities and high ownership of mobile 2016).
phones. The paper discusses the efforts made by Sesame
Workshop in India to support children’s grade l and 2 reading In India, most mobile based educational efforts in the past have
skills, specifically foundational literacy and reading centred around providing educational programs and resources to
comprehension, using mobile phones at home. It provides the adults who cannot read. The Mobile and Immersive Learning
findings from a quasi-experimental design research conducted for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) project in
to evaluate the effectiveness of a mobile phone based reading India, is a relatively new research based initiative that
application on the reading levels of children. A total of 627 investigates how mobile phones can be used to enhance English
children participated in the research, which used an adapted language skills in low income students in rural India. The
version of Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) to impact evaluation of their mobile based program showed that
measure children’s early grade reading skills, in their mother children who participated in the afterschool program had
tongue. The findings indicate statistically significant gains for significant learning gains in recall of English words and phrases
children in the intervention group on four of the six subtasks: (Kam et. al, 2009). However the project mostly targeted
letter name identification, syllable identification, familiar word children who were mostly from Grade 6. Based on the review of
reading and oral reading fluency. These findings support the existing literature and as noted by Valk in his paper ‘Using
growing literature on the effectiveness of engaging and mobile phone to improve educational outcomes’, it can be
developmentally appropriate content delivered through mobile concluded that the evidence on the effectiveness of mobile
phones to improve children’s reading skills. based interventions for learning among young children is
nascent and limited (Valk et, al, 2010).
Keywords: Mobile phones, Mobile learning, Early grade
reading, EGRA This paper presents the findings from the research conducted by
School to School International (STS) on the effectiveness of a
mobile phone based reading application on children’s early
1. INTRODUCTION grade reading skills. As a part of its ‘Play, Connect, Learn’
(PCL) project, Sesame Workhsop India developed a self-paced
The education system for a majority of the children in the reading application for children with audio story books, games
developing countries is marked by many challenges, which and inbuilt assessments in their native language. The
affects the quality of teaching and learning (Bahamondez, E et. application, developed with the support from a Marathi
al, 2011). In India, the government’s emphasis on universal language expert, was installed in the mobile phones of 12,000
enrolment has resulted in almost all children attending schools, families in six districts (Amravati, Buldhana, Chandrapur,
but the quality of education delivered has remained low, Kolhapur, Sangli and Yavatmal) of the state of Maharashtra.
especially for the disadvantaged population. Poor infrastructure This reading application was developed to serve as a
in schools, high teacher-child ratio, multi-grade classrooms, supplementary learning tool for children, who otherwise attend
lack of good quality learning resources and untrained teachers low resourced government schools and have limited access to
affect the academic performance of children especially their reading materials at home.
early grade reading skills and mathematical abilies. The Annual
Status of nationwide survey of reading skills among primary About the Reading Application: The Play. Connect. Learn
school children in rural India shows that, in 2016, almost half of reading application was designed to provide leveled reading
the children surveyed (46%) cannot even identify letters in experiences to children at home through the mobile phones. It
Grade 1 (ASER, 2016). This initial gap in learning sustains and included three separate leveled reading packages with a suite of
widens with progression, and children in the higher grades audio story books, games and inbuilt assessments to track
cannot even complete the tasks for lower grades. The ASER children’s progress over time. Each reading package had four
survey findings from the same year indicate that only half of audio story books along with memory and comprehension based
grade 5 children could fluently read text at the level of the grade games. To avoid children from randomly switching from one
2 syllabus. These statistics are alarming and reflect a great need story book to the next, the team developed the game design in a
to identify alternate ways to enable learning for all children way that a child could progress to the next audio story book
only by scoring at least 70 percent on the comprehension game.
The last few years have seen a growing recognition of the role A score of less than 70 meant that the child had to re-read the
of technology to enhance the learning environment of children. book and attempt the comprehension game again.
The use of information and communication technologies (ICT)
to empower teachers and transform the teaching and learning SWI partnered and trained local NGO members on how to
process has grown steadily, with the use of smartboards, install the application on the mobile phones of families and to
computers and tablets in schools or at home. There is a growing build the capacity of the parents to use it with children at home.
penetration of mobile phones in South Asia, a trend driven by As the application required a smartphone with certain
high purchasing power of people, low pricing for mobile phones technological capacities, SWI had to distribute smartphones to
and better internet connectivity (UNESCO, 2012). The families who did not have access to the required technology.

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Further, in the absence of sustained internet connectivity, the than children who did not have access to the intervention
families could not download the reading application. The NGO (Figure 1).
members made physical visits to almost all the households to Figure 1: Mean Results by EGRA Subtask and Group at
install each reading package on their smartphones and train Baseline and Endline
them on ways to engage in shared reading activities with their
children. Each reading package was used by families for
approximately 3 months before the next package was installed.
25
School to School International conducted the evaluation
research to assess whether access to appropriate content 20
delivered through mobile phones at home, improved the early 15
grade reading skills of children, compared to those who did not Intervention
receive the content. Semi-structured end of the project (EOP) 10 Group

interviews were also conducted to understand and document the 5

lessons learnt to inform the potential scalability of the project. Comparison
Group
0
2. METHOD

A quasi-experimental design study with a matched control

group was conducted to assess the impact of the intervention.
Within each target district, geographically close villages were
* Indicates the gain scores for the intervention group were
grouped into clusters, and were randomly assigned into
significantly higher than the gain scores for the comparison
intervention or comparison groups. This ensured that the
group at p<0.05.
villages were not close to each other, thus minimizing the effect
of contamination. In both the groups, families with children in
Additionally, the proportion of intervention group children who
Grades 1 and 2 were randomly selected, until each district’s
received zero scores at endline was statistically significantly
required sample size was reached. A total of 627 children
lower than that of comparison group children on three subtasks:
participated in the research study, of these 313 were in the
syllable identification, familiar word reading, and Oral reading
intervention group and 314 in the comparison group. The
fluency.
baseline data was collected in June and August 2016, and the
endline data was collected between April to June 2017.
Figure 2: Percentage of children receiving zero score by EGRA
subtasks (%)
Table 1: Sample Characteristics
100
Category Number of children 90
Intervention Comparison Total 80
Boys 162 156 318 70
% of children

Intervention
Girls 151 158 309 60 Baseline
50 Intervention
Grade 1 156 141 297 40 Endline

Grade 2 157 173 330 30 Comparison

Baseline
Total 313 314 627 20
Comparison
10 Endline
0
The study used the adapted version of the Early Grade Reading
Assessment (EGRA) tool, customized in the Marathi language,
to measure children’s reading abilities, comprehension and
fluency in their mother tongue. Trained researchers
administered EGRA at baseline and end-line in both
intervention and comparison groups to assess any improvement The intervention also benefitted grade 1 and grade 2 children in
on children’s foundation reading skills. Gain scores were different ways; grade 1 students in the intervention group made
computed as the difference between endline and baseline for statistically significant greater gains than their peers in the
each subtask, and student reading performance was calculated comparison group on the letter name identification subtask
comparing gain scores for students in the intervention group to whereas the grade 2 students in the intervention group showed
gain scores for students in the comparison group. Differences in statistically significant greater gains than their peers in the
gain scores between the intervention and comparison groups comparison group four subtasks: letter name identification,
were tested for significance using independent samples t-test syllable identification, familiar word reading, and oral reading
analysis. fluency subtasks.

In terms of gender, both boys and girls in the intervention group

3. RESULTS could benefit, though to varying degrees. The boys in the
intervention group had statistically higher gains from baseline to
The research study shows that on average, children in the end line over their peers in the comparison group on more
intervention group had statistically significant greater gains subtasks (Figure 3:letter name identification, syllable
from baseline to endline than children in the comparison group identification, familiar word reading, oral reading fluency), than
on four of the six subtasks: letter name identification, syllable did girls in the intervention group over girls in the comparison
identification, familiar word reading and oral reading fluency,

14 SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 16 - NUMBER 2 - YEAR 2018 ISSN: 1690-4524
 group (Figure 4: letter name identification, syllable children in the intervention and comparison group. However,
identification). these results are promising as reading comprehension is a higher
order skill that requires development of other critical skills like
Figure 3: Average gain scores from Baseline to Endline- Boys phonemic awareness, sight word vocabulary, oral reading
fluency. It will be worth exploring how reading comprehension
25 in children can be improved using mobile technology along
with support from parents through shared reading experiences.
20

15
The project also impacted boys and girls differently. Boys in the
treatment group showed statistically higher gains than their
10 peers in comparison group on more subtasks than girls in the
two groups. One of the possible reasons could be that the boys
5 had more opportunities to use the mobile phones than the girls.
In the absence of reliable data on the time spent by each child, it
0
is not possible to validate this hypothesis for this project.
However future interventions should consider ways to ensure
equitable access to educational opportunities for both girls and
boys in school and at home.
Intervention Boys During the monitoring visits, it was observed that the mobile
Comparison Boys phone was generally with the father and the child could only
access it in the morning or when the father was back from work.
* Indicates the gain scores for the intervention group were
Also, due to Internet connectivity challenges in the six districts
significantly higher than the gain scores for the comparison
of Maharashthra, it was not possible to capture accurate time
group at p<0.05
spent by each child on the reading application which prevented
collection of dosage data for analysis. Further, each content
Figure 4: Average gain scores from Baseline to Endline- Girls
package required significant memory which was generally not
available on many phones. Due to this challenge, the previous
content packages had to be deleted, which in general limited the
25 children’s exposure time to the full suite of content activities.
20
Despite all this, the current findings from this research support
15
the growing literature on the potential of mobile phones for
10 improving children’s mother tongue based reading skills in
early grades.
5

0
5. CONCLUSION

Intervention Girls The Play. Connect. Learn project leveraged the availability of
mobile phones at home to deliver interactive leveled content to
Comparison Girls promote reading skills among children in early grades. However
due to the wide variation in the type of devices and their
* Indicates the gain scores were significantly higher at p<0.05 functionality, the project team had to distribute smartphones to
the families for continuous engagement with the reading
Most families in the end of the project (EOP) interviews application. In future, it will be important to find a solution to
reported absence of sufficient reading materials for children at this challenge and explore how mobile technologies can be used
home prior to the intervention, and stated their limited role in to address the needs of low resourced communities, in a cost
supporting their children’s education. They acknowledged that effective and scalable way.
the application provided a novel way to engage in reading
experiences with their children at home. Going forward, any mobile learning based project should try to
accurately capture how much time on an average children
usually spend with the reading application or if different groups
4. DISCUSSION of children (boys versus girls, rural versus urban etc.) use the
application differently. The research should capture whether the
The findings of this research study indicate that engaging, differential usage has any impact on children’s reading
developmentally appropriate and interactive content delivered outcomes. Further investigation should also explore parents’
through mobile phones at home has the potential to improve role in supporting reading acquisition skills for young children,
children’s early grade reading skills. There were many technical especially in promoting reading comprehension. And finally,
challenges in the implementation of the project on ground, like additional research of the mobile application and the mother
the limited memory of the mobile phones, poor internet tongue based content is required to build a stronger evidence
connectivity, limited access to smartphones by the children, and base for the project components and the delivery mechanism.
lack of reliable back end data to track usage. Despite all this, the
‘Play.Connect.Learn’ application was successful in significantly
improving children’s skills on letter name identification,
syllable identification, familiar word reading and oral reading
fluency. There was no statistically significant difference in the
increase in scores on reading comprehension subtasks for

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