[Research] Randomized controlled trials showing OLPC efficacy as an educational intervention?

[Samuel Klein]

Hello Mike,

Possibly surprising: there have been efforts to collate available
research about OLPC.  One collection can be found here:
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Research

Large-scale PovLab research is expensive.  My ideal would be to see
them run a multi-country 18-36-month study.  A friend there once
quoted me a few hundred thousand dollars to run a multi-country study
for a year; surprising - that sounded cheap.  But groups funding
studies have so far been interested in targeted research in individual
countries.

The largest ones underway are funded by the IDB (Uruguay) and the NSF
(Birmingham).  While neither is that sort of cross-country analysis,
they are useful analyses of interventions.  Sadly there are no such
studies underway yet (unsurprising: no any truly large 1:1
deployments) in any of the LDCs.

Regards,
Sam.


On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Mike.lifeguard
<mike.lifeguard at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Hello,
>
> I have, for a few days, been asking in IRC whether there is any research
> on the efficacy of OLPC as an educational intervention in the developing
> world. Unsurprisingly, nobody had an answer for me. Hopefully the
> members of this list will have a better idea.
>
> In particular I am interested in randomized controlled trials like those
> done by the Poverty Action Lab at MIT. If you know of such research, I'd
> be very happy to have it pointed it out to me.
>
> Thanks,
> - -Mike
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-- 
Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj