Improving Student Outcomes through Adaptive Learning Platforms : Experimental Evidence from the Dominican Republic

Overview & Synopsis

Most students in developing countries receive grade-level instruction despite lacking prerequisite skills, a mismatch that widens learning gaps as students progress. This paper reports evidence from a randomized controlled trial across 38 classrooms and 1,333 ninth-grade students in the Dominican Republic, in which classrooms were randomly assigned to one of three arms: computer-adaptive learning (CAL) software replacing two of seven weekly mathematics hours, CAL combined with small-group tutoring, or a business-as-usual control. CAL improved test scores by 0.29–0.31 standard deviations over six months, among the larger effects documented for education technology interventions in developing countries. Adding small-group tutoring yielded no detectable improvement over CAL alone; if anything, classrooms assigned to both interventions showed smaller gains than those receiving CAL alone, though this difference is not statistically significant. Evidence on mechanisms indicates that tutoring classrooms exhibited reduced engagement with the CAL platform. These results suggest that computer-adaptive learning software can be effectively integrated into classroom instruction to improve learning at scale, but that combining multiple interventions is not guaranteed to produce additive benefits and may instead generate unintended behavioral responses that offset their effectiveness.