Practical lessons for phone-based assessments of learning.

Area of Science:

• Education
• Public Health
• Remote Assessment Technologies

Background:

• School closures due to COVID-19 impact over 1.5 billion children globally.
• These closures, while mitigating health risks, introduce new educational and health challenges.
• Remote phone-based assessments are crucial for real-time evaluation amid social distancing.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide practical guidance for conducting phone-based learning assessments.
• To address the lack of established protocols in health and education literature for remote assessments.
• To share lessons learned from pilot testing in Botswana.

Main Methods:

• Pilot testing of phone-based assessments in Botswana.
• Drawing upon existing literature on oral reading and mathematics assessments.
• Developing practical lessons for researchers and service providers.

Main Results:

• Preliminary evidence suggests phone-based assessments can accurately capture basic numeracy skills.
• Guidance is provided on ensuring child safety, measure reliability, and validity.
• Strategies for effective item adaptation, assessment brevity, respondent engagement, and bias mitigation are outlined.

Conclusions:

• Phone-based assessments are a feasible tool for gathering meaningful learning data remotely.
• The proposed lessons can guide effective implementation of phone-based learning assessments.
• This approach supports ongoing educational evaluation during public health crises.