The impact of ICTs on student performance: evidence from wifi and smartphones
In this talk I will discuss several papers looking at the effect of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on the performance of students in K-12 schools and in the University. In the first study, I will look at the effect of wi-fi connectivity on the scores obtained by students. I will use data from an engineering school covering 3 consecutive years and 10k students. I will show that on average wi-fi access improves performance and that this relationship exhibits the expected diminishing returns to scale. Using these data, I will also show heterogeneous peer effects. Namely, peers do not seem to have an effect on student performance for younger students but they do for older students. In the second study, I will show that smartphones can be used in the classroom to improve the performance of students. Using results from a randomized control trial covering about 400 students, I will show that banning smartphones from the classroom improves grades slightly but that using them as part of the learning process improves grades further. Finally, I will show that this result arises because of the learning productivity associated to using the smartphone in the classroom, which dominates the effect of increased distraction.
08/01/2019 11:00
Software Systems
Pedro Ferreira is an Associate Professor at Heinz College and at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research work focuses on how people use technology to consume experience goods and influence others to do so. These are inextricably linked to how firms behave and how public policies affect market structures. Ferreira’s work focuses on the application of robust empirical identification methods to analyze large datasets obtained from organic in-vivo large-scale network-centric randomized experiments. His research spans two interrelated applied areas -- the impact of information and communication technologies on education and peer-influence and consumption in the media industry. The bulk of his work is on medialytics – using big data analytics to understand the future of the media industry. In addition, Ferreira has also been studying competition, consumer churn and switching costs in telecommunications.
