This is Part 1 of a six-part blog series inspired by discussions with partners working in the EdTech space who recognize they do not have the information they need to make informed decisions and recommendations. With that in mind, we put together a series summarising what we have learned so far in each of our focus areas: Data for Decisions,…
In sub-Saharan Africa, there is no shortage of new technology in the education sector. There is also a substantial global body of research on the science of learning. However, it is not often that we see where the two intersect: many EdTech developers don’t apply what we know about how children learn to the design of their products. We believe…
The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 exacerbated many already existing challenges affecting access to education worldwide. At its peak, over 1.6 billion learners globally were affected by school closures, disproportionately impacting children in low- and lower-middle-income countries who were already facing substantial education challenges prior to the pandemic. With 2 trillion hours of in-person schooling lost due to…
In 2021, EdTech Hub partnered with the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government to deliver an executive education programme focused on digital transformation and educational technologies (EdTech). This programme — which convened nearly 30 policymakers from 13 countries — was a miniature community of practice (COP) focused on EdTech reform. In this blog, we introduce key principles to implement…
For three days, between 11 and 13 May 2022, nearly 1,000 participants from over 70 countries spread across Africa and the world joined eLearning Africa’s 15th international conference on ICT in education, training, and skills development (eLA 2022). The conference attracted participants from Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, South Africa, Europe, and the United States of America. This is Africa’s largest…
This blog is the first in a series exploring Raising Readers, an EdTech Hub and Worldreader research project set in Kenya seeking to better understand what drives parental engagement in learning and generate new evidence on what works in terms of learner equity, quality, and cost-efficiency. This blog sets out the human-centered design approach undertaken by Kenyan school officials, parents,…
Are you a government official, NGO or researcher looking to understand what education data is available locally? Our new guidance note shares practical lessons learnt from mapping the availability of education data in Kenya, Malawi, and Sierra Leone. Last year, we posted about the Unlocking Data initiative and its goal to support access, use, and sharing of education data to…
This study sought to understand more about how teachers and school leaders in low and middle-income countries assessed student progress when students were learning remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was undertaken in six countries – Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, and South Africa. The data collection involved focus group discussions with two held in each country. It was…
Educational technologies (EdTech) have been used in a multitude of ways to enable children to gain greater access to impactful and continuous education. At the same time, differences in EdTech use and access, across and within countries, also show that the use of EdTech can contribute to exacerbating long-standing structural inequalities. Consideration of equity is crucial in ensuring that the…
Reflective practice is not just reserved for teachers… it’s the duty of all stakeholders in the field.” Do you know how many academic articles are published each year? A recent study by To and Yu (2020) found that over 3.2 million academic articles were published in 2020 alone. And this only considered publications of researchers from the US, UK, China,…
