6 research outputs found
An evaluation of the integration of m-learning in Total Reading Approach for Children Plus (TRAC+): Enhancing literacy of early grade students in Cambodia.
The Total Reading Approach for Children (TRAC) project was first implemented in Cambodia from 2013 to 2014 by World Education, Inc. (WEI) to improve early grade reading outcomes among Grade 1 and
Grade 2 students. This was made possible through a grant from All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge
for Development (ACR GCD). ACR GCD, which was launched in 2011 by the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID), World Vision, and the Australian Government, is an ongoing
series of competitions that leverages science and technology to source, test, and disseminate scalable
solutions to improve the literacy skills of early grade learners in developing countries.
End-of-project assessments of TRAC were encouraging: over 90% of performance indicators were
successfully achieved. As a result, WEI was awarded follow-on funding by World Vision International
– Cambodia to scale up TRAC. Called TRAC Plus (TRAC+), the scale up rolled out in 13 World Vision
area development programs in five provinces in Cambodia in December 2014. In Year 1, TRAC+ ran in
170 schools, and continued to work in 138 of the 170 original target schools in Year 2. By the end of
the project in September 2017, TRAC+ had directly reached about 20,000 students.
This report presents the findings of an independent evaluation of TRAC+ conducted from February to
September 2017 by Dr. Grace Oakley, Dr. Mark Pegrum, and Dr. Thida Kheang—all from the Graduate
School of Education, The University of Western Australia—assisted by Cambodian researcher Mr.
Krisna Seng. The primary focus of the evaluation was the m-learning component of TRAC+—the use
of Aan Khmer, a game-based app developed with funding from ACR GCD to teach Khmer alphabetical
principles, vocabulary, and fluency in low resource environments. The evaluation set out to answer
the question, “How and to what extent does the integration of m-learning in TRAC+ enhance the literacy
of early grade students?” The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge on the
effectiveness, sustainability, and scalability of m-learning integrated into TRAC+ in the Cambodian
primary school context. Equity and efficiency issues were also addressed.
This evaluation was conducted under the Digital Learning for Development (DL4D) project of the Foundation
for Information Technology Education and Development (FIT-ED) of the Philippines. As part
of the Information Networks in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (INASSA) program of the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and the Department for International Development
(DFID) of the United Kingdom, DL4D aims to improve educational systems in developing countries in
Asia through testing digital learning innovations and scaling proven ones. Funding for the evaluation
was provided jointly by DL4D and ACR GCD.This research was conducted under the Digital Learning for Development (DL4D) project of the
Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development (FIT-ED) of the Philippines, jointly
funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, the Department for
International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom, and All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge
for Development (ACR GCD)—a partnership of United States Agency for International Development
(USAID), World Vision, and the Australian Government
New Grapheme Generation Rules for Two-Stage Modelbased Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion
The precise conversion of arbitrary text into its corresponding phoneme sequence (grapheme-to-phoneme or G2P conversion) is implemented in speech synthesis and recognition, pronunciation learning software, spoken term detection and spoken document retrieval systems. Because the quality of this module plays an important role in the performance of such systems and many problems regarding G2P conversion have been reported, we propose a novel two-stage model-based approach, which is implemented using an existing weighted finite-state transducer-based G2P conversion framework, to improve the performance of the G2P conversion model. The first-stage model is built for automatic conversion of words to phonemes, while the second-stage model utilizes the input graphemes and output phonemes obtained from the first stage to determine the best final output phoneme sequence. Additionally, we designed new grapheme generation rules, which enable extra detail for the vowel and consonant graphemes appearing within a word. When compared with previous approaches, the evaluation results indicate that our approach using rules focusing on the vowel graphemes slightly improved the accuracy of the out-of-vocabulary dataset and consistently increased the accuracy of the in-vocabulary dataset
The effect of spent bleaching earth ageing process on its physicochemical and microbial composition and its potential use as a source of fatty acids and triterpenes
An evaluation of the integration of m-learning in Total Reading Approach for Children Plus (TRAC+): Enhancing literacy of early grade students in Cambodia.
The Total Reading Approach for Children (TRAC) project was first implemented in Cambodia from 2013 to 2014 by World Education, Inc. (WEI) to improve early grade reading outcomes among Grade 1 and
Grade 2 students. This was made possible through a grant from All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge
for Development (ACR GCD). ACR GCD, which was launched in 2011 by the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID), World Vision, and the Australian Government, is an ongoing
series of competitions that leverages science and technology to source, test, and disseminate scalable
solutions to improve the literacy skills of early grade learners in developing countries.
End-of-project assessments of TRAC were encouraging: over 90% of performance indicators were
successfully achieved. As a result, WEI was awarded follow-on funding by World Vision International
– Cambodia to scale up TRAC. Called TRAC Plus (TRAC+), the scale up rolled out in 13 World Vision
area development programs in five provinces in Cambodia in December 2014. In Year 1, TRAC+ ran in
170 schools, and continued to work in 138 of the 170 original target schools in Year 2. By the end of
the project in September 2017, TRAC+ had directly reached about 20,000 students.
This report presents the findings of an independent evaluation of TRAC+ conducted from February to
September 2017 by Dr. Grace Oakley, Dr. Mark Pegrum, and Dr. Thida Kheang—all from the Graduate
School of Education, The University of Western Australia—assisted by Cambodian researcher Mr.
Krisna Seng. The primary focus of the evaluation was the m-learning component of TRAC+—the use
of Aan Khmer, a game-based app developed with funding from ACR GCD to teach Khmer alphabetical
principles, vocabulary, and fluency in low resource environments. The evaluation set out to answer
the question, “How and to what extent does the integration of m-learning in TRAC+ enhance the literacy
of early grade students?” The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge on the
effectiveness, sustainability, and scalability of m-learning integrated into TRAC+ in the Cambodian
primary school context. Equity and efficiency issues were also addressed.
This evaluation was conducted under the Digital Learning for Development (DL4D) project of the Foundation
for Information Technology Education and Development (FIT-ED) of the Philippines. As part
of the Information Networks in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (INASSA) program of the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and the Department for International Development
(DFID) of the United Kingdom, DL4D aims to improve educational systems in developing countries in
Asia through testing digital learning innovations and scaling proven ones. Funding for the evaluation
was provided jointly by DL4D and ACR GCD.This research was conducted under the Digital Learning for Development (DL4D) project of the
Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development (FIT-ED) of the Philippines, jointly
funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, the Department for
International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom, and All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge
for Development (ACR GCD)—a partnership of United States Agency for International Development
(USAID), World Vision, and the Australian Government