Measuring Knowledge Gains in an SMS m-Learning Intervention: The Case of ChildConnect South Africa
ChildConnect is an early childhood development programme which aims to use mobile learning to support and educate parents and other caregivers. The programme is based on an SMS curriculum focused on early childhood development content, underpinned by six
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Abstract. ChildConnect is an early childhood development programme which aims to use mobile learning to support and educate parents and other caregivers. The programme is based on an SMS curriculum focused on early childhood development content, underpinned by six core learning outcomes. In a pilot in 2017, 899 primary and secondary caregivers signed up to receive the messages. Caregivers were randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group. The treatment group received 3 messages a week for 24 weeks while the control group received one message every two weeks. Pre and post-tests were administered using ‘Unstructured Supplementary Service Data’ (USSD) surveys on mobile phones. Results of the tests were combined into a composite learning outcome score. This paper explores preliminary evidence of knowledge gains, comparing pre-test outcome scores to post-test outcome scores across treatment and control groups. The treatment group performed better on their learning outcome score than those in the control group by *0.7 points (Cohen’s d = 0.21, small effect size, but non-trivial). This shows that there was a small but measurable positive effect on the knowledge gains of the treatment group compared to the control. Keywords: m-learning Knowledge gains
South Africa Parenting programme Evaluation
1 Introduction The absence of public communications strategies to support primary caregivers at scale has been noted across 91 countries [1]. Harnessing m-learning - defined by [2] as ‘learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions, using personal electronic devices’ (p.4) - can be a cost effective way to offer a national early childhood parenting programme. To this end, short message service (SMS) is particularly attractive in contexts such as South Africa, where adults in low income communities tend to have access to feature (and not smart) mobile phones. [3] note that ‘various distance and higher education institutions in Africa pioneered the use of SMS on very basic mobile phones since the early 2000s’. Drawing on more recent literature [4] offer three examples of SMS use for public communication: Smoking cessation [5], diabetes prevention [6] and encouraging reading to children [7]. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. E. Auer and T. Tsiatsos (Eds.): IMCL 2019, AISC 1192, pp. 69–80, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49932-7_7
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N. Roberts et al.
The simple SMS is a ‘very powerful tool to communicate easily and just-in-time with large groups of learners or even individually’ [3]. One of the key strengths of SMS is its broadcast functionality – the ability to send a single message to multiple recipients through bulk messaging. Mobile connectivity has created the opportunity for governments to send public service messages by the press of a button into the ‘palms’ of its citizens [8]. Sending an SMS is significantly cheaper than making a voice call [9]. SMS can be used for community engagement and development, as well as for public health initiatives and practice [10].
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