June 2008 — News
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Are Underprivileged Students Better Off Without Computers?
Not exactly a glowing endorsement for pumping more funds into computer subsidies for the poor.
This may seem a cruel and counter-intuitive twist at a time when the governments of developing nations and non-governmental groups (such as One Laptop per Child) are pouring resources into large-scale initiatives to bring computers to underprivileged youth around the world. But the technology itself may not be the problem.
U Chicago's Malamud told me, "In our paper, we make the point that, since computers represent such a versatile technology, the risk and benefits are highly dependent on how children actually use the computer. In a home setting, the effect of computer use likely depends on the available software and the degree of parental supervision. Parents can help direct computer use towards more productive activities and constrain children from spending too much time playing games (something that is captured by our 'rules' variable)."
These are points education technology advocates have made in the past when research has shown negligible (and, rarely, negative) results when examining the impact of technology on student outcomes. That is, direction, training, support, solid implementation, and, of course, an underlying foundation to apply technology tools to a given task are often prerequisites to gaining any kind of significant learning outcomes benefit through the deployment of technology.
In the case of the Romanian program, subsidies were provided for the purchase of home computers. The Ministry of Education did provide access to educational software. However, there was little, if anything, it could do to enforce, guide, or support the use of the computers for educational purposes.
Malamud explained via e-mail: "Regarding the possible lack of support or lack of a coherent plan for those who received computers, I think that the nature of home computers puts a limit on what the Romanian Ministry of Education could have done. They offered free educational software and subsidized the actual hardware--the implementation of the program was very successful. But they obviously could not control how these computers would be used. Perhaps computers would have been more effective if they had been offered in a structured setting at school. But it bears pointing out that the evidence on the effect of school computers on educational outcomes is also quite mixed."
According to the researchers, few children installed educational software on their computers, and fewer still reported actually using that educational software. (Incidentally, the definition of "educational software" in the study was applied broadly, not limited just to the software provided by the Ministry of Education.)
But Malamud and Pop-Eleches did, in fact, find a correlation between outcomes and the presence of a stay at home parent in families that received the vouchers.
