The Effect of Computer Assisted Learning on Children's Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Cambodia

         
Author Name NAKAMURO Makiko (Keio University) / ITO Hirotake (Keio University)
Creation Date/NO. September 2020 20-E-074
Research Project Establishing Evidence-Based Policy Making in Japan
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Abstract

This paper examines the causal effects of computer-assisted learning on children's cognitive and noncognitive skills. We ran school-by-grade-level clustered randomized controlled trials at five public elementary schools in Cambodia. After confirming that the IQ scores of treated students significantly improved over just three months, we randomly reassigned those students either into treatment or control groups for an additional seven-month comparison. We find that students retain their cognitive skills during the additional seven-month treatment, but the initial gain diminishes for students who leave the program. Conversely, a meaningful effect on noncognitive skills is not detected immediately after the first three-month short-run program, but the effect appears to become significant and persists in the longer run.