Study: Tablet Use, Including Home Broadband, Improved Test Scores

Project Tomorrow and Kajeet announced the results from the Making Learning Mobile study, a three-year-long study, whose final results show that tablet usage increased students’ test scores. The teachers are more familiar with integrating tablets into classroom lessons and homework, giving students a better understanding on how to best use the tablets as an educational tool.

Falconer Elementary School in Chicago, the focus school for the Making Learning Mobile project, has an exceptionally high percentage of low-income students (95%) and 45 percent are English Language Learners, this also indicates that a majority of students lack continuous home Internet access.

The Making Learning Mobile project distributed Android tablets to 85 5th grade students and the three teachers; the tablets were enabled with Kajeet Education Broadband™.

How Students Used the Tablets to Support Learning

Past results from the study showed that tablets at home and school increased student engagement and also indicated the importance of teacher professional development. The study also found that tablets positively impact students’ reading and writing proficiency since they have access to materials that allow them to gain more practice, this result is significant to Falconer Elementary considering the high percentage of English Language Learners. These results align with the results from this year, concluding that tablets and connectivity help with student engagement and increased their desire to continue learning.

The results from this year’s study emphasize the benefits of technology integration in the classroom, the students at Falconer Elementary with tablets scored better on standardized tests than other fifth graders in the Chicago public school district and scored higher than the fifth graders without tablets at Falconer Elementary School. The classroom of students that scored the highest overall was the one where the teacher has had tablets in their classroom all three years, showing that success is not only based on student access but also the ability of the teacher to successfully integrate technology into the classroom.

Math Test Score Data From Targeted Schools

A fifth grade student who participated in the study said, “I think having the tablets is great. I’ve been learning more and studying more than I used to and I think it is because of the tablets. If it wasn’t for the tablets and the Internet, I would not be a very good student this year.”

FINAL RESULTS INCLUDE: 

• Use of technology at home increased year-over-year. Sixty-nine percent of the 5th graders used the Internet-enabled tablets every day, at school and home, to support their learning this year, whereas last year, 51 percent of the students reported they rarely or never used technology at home to support schoolwork or homework assignments while in 4th grade
• Falconer Elementary students had the highest percentage of 5th graders scoring at or above the national average RIT (Rasch Unit) in math compared to other comparable Chicago schools, according to the Northwest Evaluation Association’s Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) assessment scores.
• Within one class of the cohort, the students’ average RIT score in math improved by 11.26 points from the spring 2014 to spring 2015-- this was 24 percent higher than the overall 5th grade at the school.
• Students identified a change in their learning behaviors that resulted in increased learning opportunities. Sixty-eight percent stated they were more likely to complete homework assignments with Internet-enabled tablets and 76 percent said they had a greater interest in learning.