A tale of two classrooms (and seventy tablets)
Reflections on the implementation of the Learning Passport in Guinea
In January 2023, two primary schools in Conakry, Guinea, embarked on a journey to re-imagine their day-to-day education through technology. The students accessed classroom content through the Learning Passport (LP), a cutting-edge digital learning platform that is currently deployed in 36 countries worldwide including in development and humanitarian settings.
In resource-constrained environments like Guinea, digital learning initiatives typically place a lot of focus on technology-related concerns -- such as procuring devices in large quantities, installing connectivity at school, or fixing electric boards. Absorbed by these preoccupations, programme managers and government officers focus less on supporting schools to manage changes linked with introducing technology in the classroom, which is nonetheless as critical as technology.
Educational technology is not a “plug-and-play” solution. In order to harness the potential of digital learning for building foundational and digital skills through personalized content, schools must adjust their everyday classroom activities. However, the time and resources that it takes to do so is often-underestimated. Guinea’s tale of two classrooms illustrates what is needed -- beyond technology -- to make digital learning work for children’s learning.
Technology as a bottleneck…and a solution
Guinea's 2020-2029 National Education Plan recognizes digital learning as a pivotal driver for advancing quality education in the country. According to a 2019 assessment, 55 per cent of Guinean children did not achieve minimum competency in reading at the end of their primary schooling cycle, and 68 per cent of children performed below the expected grade-level competences in mathematics.
To address this learning crisis, the LP provides access to literacy and numeracy courses that were specifically developed for Guinean third and fourth graders. These resources were validated by the National Institute for Research and Pedagogical Action (INRAP), Guinea’s accreditation body, ensuring full alignment with the national curriculum.
"The effectiveness of an education system depends on the quality of educational inputs such as the use of learner-centered pedagogical innovations," commented Guillaume Hawing, Guinea’s Minister of Education, who included the LP among the “Priority Projects” of his department. "With UNICEF support, the Government of Guinea is firmly committed to improving teaching and developing learning tools through the implementation of the Learning Passport. This platform, which allows students and teachers to improve their skills, is a real opportunity to help ensure that every child has access to quality education," added Félix Ackebo, UNICEF Representative in Guinea.
In a country where only 22 per cent of the population uses the internet, the LP provides offline access to these educational resources. Content was pre-downloaded onto tablets provided by UNICEF. However, simply providing technology is insufficient.
So, what can Guinea’s tale of two classrooms teach us about using technology to support students’ learning?
Photo A. In this classroom, up to six students share the same screen.
Photo B. Two or maximum three students follow the course on the same tablet in this other classroom.
In this first classroom (Photo A), tablets are barely visible amid students eagerly engaging with their teacher. Students’ engagement when using the LP has never been an issue, but the six-student-to-one-tablet ratio certainly was.
In the second classroom (Photo B), there are only two, sometimes three, students per tablet. Remarkably, both schools received the same number of tablets (35), had similar class sizes (56 vs. 51), an equal number of LP-trained teachers, comparable infrastructure and commitment from school directors. Both schools are located just 20 minutes apart from each other.
What explains this difference? The answer came from regular monitoring and class observation.
Lessons learned: Scheduling matters
The scheduling of classes using the LP partially explains this discrepancy. In the first school, two classes were scheduled to use the tablets simultaneously. That means that the stock had to be divided across two classes, resulting in a less favorable student-to-tablet ratio. The school director’s will to expand the number of classes and children using the LP during the regular week motivated this strategy.
Operational challenges limit the full utilization of tablets
Teachers and school directors insisted: "We need more devices", echoing the practitioners’ and government officials’ tendency to focus primarily on technology. But would providing more tablets solve the issue? Evidence from the field suggested otherwise. On average, we observed 24 tablets being used in classes, even in the school that allocated all its 35 tablets to one class at a time. This meant that over 30 per cent of available tablets remained unused.
Teacher feedback and school monitoring highlighted that this under-utilization was primarily due to operational challenges related to charging and transferring tablets to and from the charging station. Teachers reported difficulties in starting and finishing lessons on time when incorporating technology – an alarming issue if technology reduces the time that students spend learning.
Charging and transferring devices efficiently requires dedicated personnel within the school, as teachers do not have the capacity to take on these additional tasks. The intention of digital learning is to make the teachers’ workload easier -- not add to their burdens.
While some schools filled this personnel gap through community-based volunteers, the recruitment of an operations officer should become part of digital learning programmes. Besides helping with device management, operations officers could also assist teachers in addressing technical issues during classes, which will enable teachers to concentrate on delivering their lesson plan rather than troubleshooting the LP. Neglecting proper technology management will mean that devices will collect dust.
Embedding technology, not just procuring it
Technological barriers undoubtedly hamper schools’ ability to deliver digital learning in low-resource contexts. Schools need support in procuring enough devices for their students. But devices without a robust management system will result in their under-utilization and other inefficacies, such as high tablet-to-student ratios, which reduce students’ ability to learn. Ongoing research in schools has allowed UNICEF Programme Managers to detect these challenges and help schools correct them along the way.
The tale of these two classrooms reminds us that providing technology alone does not guarantee success. Embedding technology – within a well-planned scheduling system and with adequate operational support – is fundamental to fulfill the promises of digital learning in Guinea and beyond.
