The Impacts and Mechanisms of Distance Learning Interventions in Rural China

The project adopts three different treatments. The first treatment provides students "live" instruction online from a highly qualified teacher, the second treatment provides students with pre-recorded, and the third treatment provides teachers and students with teaching resources, teaching plans, short videos and other related teaching materials of urban excellent teachers.

2020-03-31

2020-12-31

student's test score and non-cognitive measures

student's test score includes standardized test score given by research team and student’s test scores in school
non-cognitive measures include student’s Big-Five personality measures, self-efficacy, etc.

Teacher’s ratings, students’ learning interest, education aspiration, and mental health etc.

The project adopts three different treatments aimed at improving students’ English learning in rural areas in China. The first treatment provides students "live" instruction online from a highly qualified teacher, the second treatment provides students with pre-recorded, and the third treatment provides teachers and students with teaching resources, teaching plans, short videos and other related teaching materials of urban excellent teachers. In each treatment group, online instructors/project managers work with local teachers and dual-teacher links are forged to improve rural students’ English learning.
By cooperating with provincial education department in Gansu Province, we are able to carry out the trial in three prefectures and cover 200 rural schools. In each school, one class in Grade 3 and one in Grade 4 are randomly drawn to produce the final sample. An education foundation, sponsored by a top education company in China, provides intervention courses/materials to treatment schools for free and support the daily project management.

The project/experiment is carried out in five stages: baseline survey, random grouping, intervention, mid-term monitoring and endline evaluation.

1. Baseline survey
The baseline survey is conducted in 200 primary schools in Northwestern China. The survey includes standardized English test for students and questionnaires for students, teachers, and school principals. Well-trained personnel are sent to rural schools to monitor standardized tests and help respondents answer survey questionnaires using school computers.

2. Random grouping

Following the baseline survey and English tests, schools are randomly assigned to one of the four groups: live instruction (treatment 1), pre-recorded instruction (treatment 2), teacher’s discretion (treatment 3) and control group. We stratify the randomization by county to improve power and use computer program to make sure the four groups are balanced over test score and key variables (collected in baseline survey).

3. Intervention
There are three treatment groups: live instruction, pre-recorded instruction and teacher’s discretion.
In the first two groups, every week students attend two classes instructed by long-distance teachers, either through dual-camera live broadcast or pre-recorded videos. Local teachers need help with class management during the instruction. They are also offered instructional materials including homework assignments, tutorials, and exams etc., and asked to use those materials after class. Project managers keep close tabs on teachers’ attendance and feedback records to ensure compliance.
In the teacher’s discretion group, local teachers are provided with pre-recorded videos, instruction slides, homework assignments, tutorials, and exams etc. Although they are highly recommended to use the materials, they have the discretion whether and how to use them.

4. Mid-term monitoring
After one semester of intervention, the research team dispatches personnel to selected schools with high degree of cooperation, average degree of cooperation and poor degree of cooperation to carry out qualitative interviews to understand the effect of the intervention and existing problems.

5. Evaluation
We conduct evaluation based on follow-up surveys. Similar test and questionnaires as in the baseline survey are given. The first follow-up will be conducted one year after the intervention to evaluate the impact of one-academic year’s intervention and we plan to carry out further follow-ups in 5 years to evaluate the long term effect.

randomization done in office by a computer

School level

Yes

200 primary schools

around 10,000 to 15,000 primary students

Treatment 1 live instruction: 50 schools
Treatment 2 pre-recorded instruction: 50 schools
Treatment 3 teacher’s discretion: 50 schools
Control: 50 schools

To fulfill statistical power, we assume that the minimum detectable effect size equals 0.2 SD.