The efficacy of digital technologies in transforming global learning

Acquiring elementary literacy and numeracy skills is a basic human right. Yet, despite global efforts to increase access to primary school education, 330 million children of primary school age are unable to read and do basic mathematics (UNESCO, 2017). Children living in remote villages, especially girls, are most at risk. This results in social and financial dependency, limits the extent to which individuals can actively participate in society, and raises vulnerability to pernicious social issues such as Forced Marriage, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and Child Labour (ICRW, 2016). This negatively impacts on a population's health and wellbeing and a country's potential for economic growth. Traditional methods of education have failed to solve this crisis, so innovative, alternative, approaches are required.
To address this global crisis, the XPRIZE Foundation, a non-profit organisation based in Los Angeles, launched a Global Learning competition to challenge teams from around the world to develop a digital technology solution that will teach basic literacy, numeracy, and writing skills to marginalised children outside of the traditional school setting. Five finalist teams were selected to be trialled with 2500 illiterate children, aged 9-11 years, from across 150 remote villages in Tanzania. In each village, children were given the same tablet device that delivered the app content developed by one of the five finalists. The different apps were allocated across the villages, to assure statistical balance of distribution amongst children's age, gender, and proximity to solar charging stations. Literacy, numeracy, and writing skills were assessed using standardised instruments for individual children before and after a 15-month period where children worked with the apps. The Global Learning XPRIZE was delivered in partnership with the World Food Programme and UNESCO and was designed as an open-source competition so that the digital solutions are freely available to anyone to build upon to allow for global scale in the years following the close of the competition.
During this studentship a new and unique partnership with the XPRIZE Foundation will be established to understand how and why digital technologies might provide high-quality basic education to marginalised children worldwide.

A mixed methodological approach will be applied to answer the following key research questions:

1. How effective are digital technologies at supporting foundational scholastic skills?

2. Which app features and pedagogy best support the acquisition of literacy, numeracy, and writing skills?

3. What is the added value to using digital technologies in remote villages, particularly to pernicious social and gender issues?

4. Which environmental factors impact most on learning outcomes with digital technologies?

5. Can established Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches assist in the design, implementation and evaluation of educational interventions?

Methods employed will include a systematic review of existing literature, mapping the different apps to theoretical frameworks of literacy and numeracy acquisition and mobile learning, conducting an expert elicitation of staff involved in the Global Learning XPRIZE and undertaking a secondary analysis of the competition data using machine learning techniques.