Bi-weekly text messages and calls to strengthen learning at home

Organization: Youth Impact
Country: Botswana, Afghanistan, Argentina, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Namibia, Pakistan, Paraguay, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Uganda, and Uruguay
Education level: Primary
Organization type: Nongovernmental organization
Family engagement type: Strengthening Home Learning and Caregiving 

Overview

When the COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread school closures, the leaders of Botswana-based nonprofit Youth Impact wanted to find a low-tech solution to minimize student learning loss (Winthrop et al., 2020). Resource constraints abounded, and paper learning packets proved challenging to deliver. The team quickly realized that nearly all families already had a multiuse learning device at home: a cellphone (Rosenberg, 2020). Youth Impact developed and piloted a text- and call-based mathematics learning program that would not only support student learning but also increase family-school engagement (Angrist, Bergman, Evans, et al., 2020). During this time of crisis, it relied on families as key capacity builders, scaffolding parent involvement in children’s mathematics learning by providing structured problem-solving details and live facilitation. The low-tech remote learning strategy ultimately involved weekly text message challenges, which provided a mathematics task and problem-solving strategies (Angrist, Bergman, Brewster, et al., 2020). Trained facilitators followed up with short phone calls, during which parents and students sat together to review the problem. Since 2020, the program, now known as ConnectEd, has expanded across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

How does it work?

In developing ConnectEd, the first step was to conduct operation prepilots following the Youth Impact strategy (Angrist, Bergman, Evans, et al., 2020). This included iterating on instructional content and determining the contact person for every student they intended to reach. This contact person could be any adult in the student’s life with a cellphone and availability—often a parent but sometimes a grandparent, distant family member, or community member (Youth Impact, personal communication, April 9, 2021). Youth Impact then conducted sensitization phone calls with the contact person, around 20 minutes in length, to explain the organization’s work, the strategy’s purpose, and the limited resources required.

Youth Impact sent students weekly 310-character text messages containing simple numeric and word math problems covering the four basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The text message included a welcome message, a content problem, a guiding tip for parents to help their children, and a challenge problem. Welcome messages reminded participants who was contacting them and why. Content problems alternated between word and numeric problems, allowing for participants to practice different skill sets. For example, an addition problem might ask, “62 + 18 = ?” This would then be followed by a word problem: “66 men and 25 women are dancing. How many are dancing altogether?” (Youth Impact, personal communication, April 9, 2021). These two questions test for numeracy and literacy. Another example of a simple word problem is “Sunshine has 23 sweets. She goes to the shops to buy 2 more. How many does she have altogether?” The texts provided guiding tips on problem-solving methods, such as reading the problem out loud or translating words (for example, “altogether” in mathematical operations means “plus”). Messages were one-way, and students were not required to respond. Instead, remote facilitators encouraged parents to work with their child to find an answer.

After students and parents had attempted to solve these problems, Youth Impact conducted 15-to-20-minute follow-up calls to assess the level of parent and student understanding. These calls would include an introduction and confirmation that the parent had received the text message. The facilitator would then ask the parent to put the phone on speaker with the child in the room so that they could discuss the text message problem together. If necessary, the facilitator would provide guidance about how to solve the problem. To end each call, the facilitator would deliver a simple math question as a “problem of the day” to assess the child’s understanding of the topic discussed during the call. Based on the child’s response, the facilitator would tailor the instructional content for the following week’s phone call to the child’s level of progress and understanding. These calls served to engage both parents and children in the learning process and in doing so built parents’ confidence in supporting their child’s learning from home.

What makes it work?

Issues around trust and capacity proved to be the primary barriers that Youth Impact had to overcome to carry out the low-tech remote learning strategy. Many parents believed the initial calls were scams, or they were hesitant to give consent or were skeptical that math could be taught over the phone (Rosenberg, 2020). Parents’ perception of the program requirements and resource demands proved a barrier to entry. Parents initially assumed they would be required to have mathematics training to work with their children or that they would need to give up their cellphones for hours at a time.

Through trial and error, Youth Impact came to discover certain best practices when it came to execution (Youth Impact 1ove, personal communication, April 9, 2021). Establishing a comprehensive and streamlined sensitization call to clearly outline expectations helped to assuage these fears. Youth Impact leaders further discovered that the messenger matters: The first contact set the stage for all future interactions. It proved challenging to develop rapport, particularly with phone calls obscuring culturally important body language. As a result, the organization focused on training facilitators to use a friendly tone and accessible language. This sensitization did not end with the initial outreach. As children moved, phone numbers changed, or family life became busier, Youth Impact learned to invest resources in providing ongoing contact to maintain family interest in the program.

Capacity was also a significant hurdle. Calls to Youth Impact’s 10,000 contacts were extremely time intensive and often futile, as nearly 3,000 had incorrect phone numbers (Youth Impact, personal communication, April 9, 2021). Although facilitators anticipated each call would require only 20 minutes, they soon discovered that facilitators needed to commit at least one hour to scheduling, rescheduling, and preparing for each call. Additionally, data input and text tracking, along with facilitators’ ongoing study of remote learning best practices, required substantial time. This meant that the initial plan for each facilitator to tackle 30 family calls each week would be impossible. To overcome these hurdles, the Youth Impact team developed a set of protocols to manage the time facilitators spent making calls. For example, facilitators were advised to make five phone call attempts per household on at least three different days. The team also tested to see if bi-weekly 40-minute calls were as effective as the original 20-minute weekly plan in improving learning, which proved to be true. Additionally, the Youth Impact team optimized the facilitator-to-household ratio to ensure facilitators had enough time to deliver instructions to the households they were assigned to call. Despite these hurdles, the program proved a simple, effective, low-tech, low-cost solution with the potential to scale and to mitigate learning loss during times of school closure and beyond.

What is the impact?

At the end of the 11-week intervention, which served nearly 500 families, a randomized control trial showed that weekly text messages paired with short phone calls to parents reduced innumeracy by up to 31 percent (Angrist, Bergman, Brewster, et al., 2020). Additionally, the program increased the time families spent on education by up to 18 percent and improved parents’ ability to correctly perceive their child’s learning level by 23-35 percent. Reflecting the success of engaging family members, 99 percent of families expressed interest in continuing the intervention after schools reopened (Angrist, Bergman, Brewster, et al., 2020). Further research across five countries showed consistent effectiveness, with average learning gains of 0.30-0.35 standard deviations, which translates to up to four years of high-quality instruction per $100 spent (Angrist, Ainomugisha, Bathena, et al., 2023). The strategy gave parents and caregivers the tools and resources to meaningfully engage in their child’s learning.

According to UNICEF, 25 percent of rural and young people under 25 years old have internet access, compared to 41 percent of their urban peers (UNICEF, 2020). Low-tech interventions like this one could help to reduce the technology gap by allowing teachers and parents to supplement the traditional education system, especially in rural areas, where internet access may be challenging and costly.

Resources/testimonials

• Low tech interventions video
• Phone call materials – Sample phone call 1 – Sample phone call 2 – Sample calling guidelines – Phone call protocols

Roles

Staff:

• Facilitators send a weekly text message with mathematics problems to the family contact person.
• Facilitators call the contact person once a week for 15-20 minutes to walk through the mathematics problems provided by text message and support the student in solving the assignment. However, when accounting for missed calls and rescheduling, it takes one hour total for facilitators to complete a phone engagement with each household.
• Teachers provide input on student numeracy levels to target questions to students according to principles from Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL), which adapts the difficulty of questions to the student’s level.
• Schools send out letters about the intervention to raise awareness among families.
• Officials assist with gathering phone numbers and figuring out who the contact person should be.

Families:

• Parents help their child engage with the weekly text message math problems and follow-up phone calls from instructors.

Resources required

People:

• 64 facilitators send text messages and make phone calls. Each manages around 24 households. To reach all households, each facilitator spends around six hours a day on the phone. Although phone calls generally last 15-20 minutes, when accounting for missed calls and rescheduling, it takes one hour in total to complete a phone engagement with each household.

Financial:

• $19 per child for sending text messages and making phone calls (Angrist, Bergman, Brewster, et al., 2020)

Technology:

• WhatsApp access for facilitator training and communication
• DT One mobile network to provide calling airtime for facilitators
• Newline Technology to manage text messages in order to reach recipients at scale
• A data collection tool such as SurveyCTO, which automatically imports demographic information and learning variables from students
• Simple and easy-to-use text message content with easily comprehensible instructions

References

Angrist, N., Bergman, P., Brewster, C., & Matsheng, M. (2020). Limiting learning loss using phone-based programming during COVID-19 in Botswana. Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/limiting-learning-loss-using-phone-based-programming-during-covid-19-botswana

Angrist, N., Bergman, P., Evans, D. K., Hares, S., Jukes, M., & Letsomo, T. (2020). Practical lessons for phone-based assessments of learning (Working Paper No. 534). Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/practical-lessons-phone-based-assessments-learning-revised-jul2020.pdf

Angrist, N., Ainomugisha, M., Bathena, S. P., Bergman, P., Crossley, C., Cullen, C., et al. (2023). Building Resilient Education Systems: Evidence from Large-Scale Randomized Trials in Five Countries. NBER. https://www.nber.org/papers/w31208

Rosenberg, T. (2020, October 6). For kids at home, “a small intervention makes a big difference.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/opinion/remote-learning-families.html

Winthrop, R., Ershadi, M., Angrist, N., Bortsie, E., & Matsheng, M. (2020, November 2). A historic shock to parental engagement in education: Parent perspectives in Botswana during COVID-19. Brookings Institution. http://www.brookings.edu/research/a-historic-shock-to-parental-engagement-in-education-parent-perspectives-in-botswana-during-covid-19/

Related strategies

Digital communication strategies are widely used across the globe in a variety of ways. Some utilize two-way communication systems between families and schools, while others provide one-way channels of information or learning support. For other examples of how different organizations leverage digital communication to improve family engagement, see:

Support learning at home:

• Ministerio de Educación de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires – Helpline to support remote learning
• Rocket Learning – Digital Parent Learning Communities
• Nord Anglia – Remote learning resources
• Inclusive Education – WhatsApp Helpline for Families of Children with Disabilities
• Family Engagement Lab – Native language text messages to strengthen learning at home

Communicating with school staff:

• Escola Municipal Professor Waldir Garcia – Digital parent-school chat groups
• School District 48: Sea to Sky – Regular communication on district activities and opportunities

Back to the Strategy Finder