OLPC research

Research, Outcome Monitoring & Impact Evaluation

Introduction

This page provides links to reports related to the OLPC project. We begin by looking at the resources used; share instruments and frameworks as well as white papers and inform about the organizations involved.

We then arrange the reports under four main headings:

1. Research[1],
2. Outcome Monitoring [2],
3. Impact Evaluation [3]
4. and other works under Miscellaneous [4].

Research, Monitoring & Evaluating is not only important as a way of improving, assessing and understanding what is happening in respective OLPC projects around the world, but also to connect this growing community at the forefront of technology integration in education to help build, suggest, and inform this field as it quickly grows and develops. In addition to the work itself, we are also at the apex of rethinking these approaches and models and innovating them to make sure the appropriate information and outcomes are being collected. The OLPC Learning Team, lead by Dr. Claudia Urrea have put forth a paper outlining the need for “Innovation in Evaluation.”[5]

We look forward for OLPC communities to continue contributing and sharing their work as well as welcome those looking for information on OLPC projects.

Please see also Experience, Constructionism, Reviews of OLPC, and Class Acts (a FLOSS Manuals community publication) for articles and other anecdotal works.

Resources

Instruments & Framework

to be added

White Papers

Innovation in Evaluation, by Dr. Claudia Urrea & Walter Bender (2012)

A look at the role of innovation in evaluation within OLPC projects and tools available through Sugar. Read more about their work here [6]

2011 OLPC in Rwanda Report by OLPC HQ (2011)

An OLPC HQ report on aspects of the Rwanda implementation.

One Laptop Per Child Pilot Project: Marshall Islands by Ministry of Education (2010)

This document outlines the Project Implementation Plan for the OLPC Pilot in the Marshall Islands. It is an addendum to the MOE Comprehensive Technology Plan.

Assessment and Overview of international M&E Reports, by the the OLPCF Learning Team (2010)

Recently published assessment of existing international M&E literature by local and government actors on OLPC distributions

Ghana: The One Laptop per Child Project and Its Applicability to Ghana, by Buchele & Owusu-Aning (2007)

An academic overview of work in Ghana, providing data and raising questions for anyone considering a national implementation.

Proposals

Please share works in progress

Research

Research is defined as the intent to add new general knowledge to the field using gathered information and data, [7] [8]

Literature

Educational Outcomes and Research from 1:1 Computing Settings (2010)

Damian Bebell and Laura O'Dwyer
The current special edition of the Journal of Technology and Assessment presents four empirical studies of K–12 1:1 computing programs and one review of key themes in the conversation about 1:1 computing among advocates and critics.

First Experiences with OLPC in European Classrooms (2009)

Describes early programs in Graz, Austria. 10/30/2009

Tackling the Problems of Quality and Disparity in Nepal's School - Education: The OLPC Model (2008)

Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta, OLE Nepal, June 2008
The paper argues that utilizing the full potential of the OLPC concept requires simultaneous work in four areas: digital content development, teacher preparation, network and power infrastructure development, and government capacity development.

1:1 Technologies/Computing in the Developing World: Challenging the Digital Divide (2008)

Mary Hooker, Education Specialist, Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative. Requires ACM Membership to view.

Proposals

Please share works in progress

Outcome Monitoring

Outcome Monitoring is a form of evaluation or assessment. It allows programs to determine what is working, and what is not working, based from expected results, so that it may be addressed and improved on an on-going basis. [9]

Literature

Results from Birmingham's One Laptop per Child XO laptop project (2011)

Shelia Cotten, et al. This report focused on positive results for students who chose to take advantage of the program, differences that might account for teacher and student interest in taking advantage of it, and the value of bridging the digitial divide.

Ceibal Assessment 2010 Summary Document (2010)

English translation of Evaluación del Plan Ceibal 2010 DOCUMENTO RESUMEN [10]

Síntesis del informe de monitoreo del estado del parque de XO a abril de (2010)

Executive Summary of the 2010 OLPC monitoring report (Spanish)

Monitoreo y evaluación educativa del Plan Ceibal: Primeros resultados a nivel nacional (2010)

Plan Ceibal 2010 Monitoring Report (Spanish) Salamano, I., Pagés, P., Baraibar, A., Ferro, H., Pérez, L., & Pérez, M.

After Installation: Ubiquitous Computing and High School Science in Three Experienced, High-Technology Schools (2010)

Brian Drayton, Joni K. Falk, Rena Stroud, Kathryn Hobbs, and James Hammerman
The present study presents data on 3 high schools with carefully elaborated ubiquitous computing systems, who have gone through at least one "obsolescence cycle" and are therefore several years past first implementation.

One to One Computing: A Summary of the Quantitative Results from the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative (2010)

Damian Bebell and Rachel Kay
This paper examines the educational impacts of the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative (BWLI), a pilot program that provided 1:1 technology access to all students and teachers across five public and private middle schools in western Massachusetts.

Evaluacion Educativa, Plan Ceibal (Uruguay) (2009)

El presente resumen de evaluación educativa contiene los primeros datos representativos a nivel nacional producidos en torno al Plan Ceibal.

Haiti pre-pilot evaluation report (2009)

This IDB report provides an analysis of usage trends and outcomes for grades 1-5 after studying 50 students, assessed by interviews and observations. Gains were observed particularly in literacy (reading and writing) and student preparedness for the future (research about envisioning their future work options.

Early OLPC experiences in an Uruguayan School (2008)

This report on the first Uruguayan XO pilot, with 150 students in a rural school, provides a good observational overview of XO activities in the classroom.

Formative Evaluation of OLPC Project Nepal: A Summary (2008)

Rabi Karmacharya, OLE Nepal, June-August 2008
This is a summary of the findings of a formative evaluation carried out by Mr. Uttam Sharma, a doctoral student at at the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. The evaluation was carried out for OLE Nepal’s internal purpose.

Evaluation of the Teaching Matters One Laptop Per Child (XO) Pilot at Kappa IV (2008)

Dr. Susan Lowes, Director, Research and Evaluation; and Cyrus Luhr, Research Assistant. Institute for Learning Technologies, Teachers College/Columbia University, June 2008.
Look at the impact of the implementation of XO laptops in Teaching Matters program in New York, USA.

Proposals

Please share works in progress

Impact Evaluation

Impact Evaluations are a particular type of evaluation that seeks to answer cause-and-effect questions. Unlike general evaluations, which can answer many types of questions, impact evaluations are structured around one particular type of question: What is the impact (or causal effect) of a program on an outcome of interest.” [11] [12]

Literature

Papers, Technology and Child Development: Evidence from the One Laptop per Child Program in Peru (2012)

Inter-American Development Bank February 2012 - 40 pages

The study measured

1. academic achievement in Math
2. academic achievement in Language
3. cognitive skills - over the 15 months of the study, olpc kids are about six months ahead of peer group without OLPC XO's
4. verbal fluency - over the 15 months of the study, olpc kids are about six months ahead of their peer group without OLPC XO's
5. Laptop Competence - olpc kids have a good understanding of their XO and know how to work with them, search the internet, the wikipedia, use the word processor, read books, take pictures & movies, etc. - average score 65%

Not measured is e.g. the effect on the family when kids take the laptops home.

Even though this program has only recently been implemented, this document presents a few preliminary findings that could be relevant for its future development. On the one hand, we find evidence of better attitudes and expectations among teachers and parents; students that are more critical of school work and of their own performance; and a greater development of technological skills among girls and boys. On the other hand, there seems to be a decrease in the intensity of computer use in the classroom, as time passes and difficulties arise in the implementation of the project.

More:

1. Complementary info & reaction by Oscar BECERRA - Responsible for designing and implementing OLPC in Peru - on the Inter-American Development Bank paper on OLPC of February 2012
   1. "In the case of the IDB study, having participated in the design and first stages I can assure the study was very well thought. However, as soon as the initial findings were reported, every interested party tried to “llevar agua para su molino” (bring water to its mill). For example, I heard many advocates of the ICT industry (the main detractor of the OLPC approach because it impacted its market share numbers) use the results to say the project was a failure and their approach should have been used."
   2. "attitudes and expectations of students parents and teachers which actually showed improvement. Students became more critical of the schools system and expected more of it. That is an important outcome that will certainly impact the quality for the system in the long term."
   3. "I did a study of impact of the program on intrinsic motivation towards school work and the results confirmed all the hypothesis. Students feel better and their readiness to work hard to learn things they think are important improves significantly more for participants in “Una Laptop por Niño” than for those who did not participate."

1. Complementary info & reaction by OLPC Association CEO Rodrigo Arboleda - on the Inter-American Development Bank paper on OLPC of February 2012

Evaluation of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), Trial project in the Solomon Islands (2010)

Australian Centre for Education Research 2010
The Trials described below in three schools in rural Solomon Islands were evaluated independently by Australian Centre for Education Research, the report was commissioned and is now published by the Solomon Islands Ministry of Education

Experimental Assessment of the Program "One Laptop Per Child" in Peru (2010)

Inter-American Development Bank July 2010
This paper presents the impact of the first large-scale randomized evaluation of the OLPC program, using data collected after 15 months of implementation in 319 primary schools in rural Peru. The results indicate that the program increased the ratio of computers per student from 0.12 to 1.18 in treatment schools.

Laptops and Fourth Grade Literacy: Assisting the Jump over the Fourth-Grade Slump (2010)

Kurt A. Suhr, David A. Hernandez, Doug Grimes, and Mark Warschauer'
This study investigated whether a one-to-one laptop program could help improve English language arts (ELA) test scores of upper elementary students.

Evaluating the Implementation Fidelity of Technology Immersion and its Relationship with Student Achievement (2010)

Kelly S. Shapley, Daniel Sheehan, Catherine Maloney, and Fanny Caranikas-Walker
This article examines the fidelity of model implementation and associations between implementation indicators and student achievement.

Evaluation of OLPC programs globally: a literature review, Version 4 (2010)

by Dita Nugroho and Michele Lonsdale. Australian Council for Educational Research, August 2010 Country program summaries, with XO deployment data, funding, and reported outcomes and impacts.

L’évaluation des déploiements OLPC : quelles méthodes ? French by Pierre Varly, consultant, member of OLPC France (2010)

English version

Evaluación de OLPC con Ingeniería de Usabilidad (2009)

An academic thesis by Ingeniero Carlos Mauro Cárdenas, Perú

Community Factors in Technology Adoption in Primary Education: Perspectives from Rural India 2100

Komathi Ale, Arul Chib. 2011 USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. CC-by-nc-sa.3

One more survey-only research, 10 children and 3 teachers, India

Proposals

Please share works in progress

Miscellaneous

One to One Laptop Schools review (2012)

High-level overviews of the major 1:1 projects around the world, including the Magellan project and many OLPC projects.

Autonomous Learning Skills: Education and Technology for Strengthening Culture: Colombia (2011)

Sandra Barragán

New Technology in Developing Countries: A Critique of the One-Laptop-Per-Child Program (2010)

Jeffrey James
A critical economic analysis of OLPC as development policy in resource limited environments

Briefing Note – One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in Afghanistan (2010)

Lima Ahmad (AIMS), Kenneth Adams (AIMS), Mike Dawson (PAIWASTOON), Carol Ruth Silver (MTSA)

One year of experiences with XO laptops in Uruguay (2009)

HTML Overview

Teacher Logs from Uruguay (2009)

Objective research in Uruguay done by sampling the previously recorded Lesson Plan logs of teachers for one week, to ascertain how many had included activities involving using XOs for learning activities.[13] and [14] give basic data, such as an average use of the XO for learning activities of less than 1.5 times per week, further interpretation would be useful.

OLPCNews: OLPC Overview (2009)

By Wayan Vota, Christoph Derndorfer and Bryan Berry of OLPC News (completely independent of OLPC)

• http://www.olpcnews.com/commentary/olpc_news/one_laptop_per_child_overview_2009.html
  
• http://www.olpcnews.com/files/One_Laptop_Per_Child_Overview_2009.pdf

Reflections on a Pilot OLPC Experience in Uruguay (2007)

Juan Pablo Hourcade, Daiana Beitler, Fernando Cormenzana, and Pablo Flores, 2007, Uruguay A two-page position paper presenting opinions regarding a pilot in Uruguay. From empirical data and observations, a positive impact on the children and their school activities is claimed by this Uruguayan team.

IDE de programación orientado al desarrollo de arquitecturas robóticas basadas en comportamientos

Andrés Aguirre Nov. 2013, proyecto de grado (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)

Existen dentro de la educación distintos entornos para implementar comportamientos robóticos para el robot Butiá. Sin embargo, ninguno de estos promueve la estructuración de los programas desarrollados utilizando una arquitectura del paradigma reactivo... ...este proyecto se realizó como una extensión del entorno de desarrollo existente Etoys orientado a la arquitectura reactiva Subsumption.

Why Schools Should Provide One Laptop Per Child (2016)

By Binbin Zheng, Michigan State University and Mark Warschauer, University of California, both researchers of technology and learning in K-12 environments for over 10 years, write about their conclusions based upon their own research, experiences and results of 96 published global studies and found significant benefits: students’ test scores in science, writing, math and English language arts improved significantly and the benefits were not limited to test scores. OLPC is regularly mentioned.

External links

• Portal Ceibal (Uruguay)
• Peru Educa (Peru)
• Paraguay Educa (Paraguay)
• Mochila Digital (Mexico)