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Levesque and Bardack

8 October 2025

Research in Support of Successful Scaling

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Imagine Worldwide’s mission is to empower children around the globe to build the literacy and numeracy skills they need to achieve their full potential

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We began with a belief that child-directed, tech-enabled learning can deliver high-quality education to millions of children

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We scoured the landscape for promising software that was appropriate for offline contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa - �and we found onebillion

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We then entered a 5-year phase of efficacy research: 2017-2022

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  • To demonstrate first to ourselves that personalized EdTech could make a meaningful difference
  • By conducting 5 RCTS using onebillion’s software in different countries, languages, and settings
  • And contributing to an evidence base of more than 9 RCTs
  • Consistently demonstrating that onecourse significantly improved literacy and numeracy learning
  • And learning impacts were increasing with annual software improvements

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  • Each primary school-aged child learns on a tablet (used by an average of 5 students per day for 30-60 mins each)
  • Tablets work without internet connectivity and are solar-powered
  • Adaptive software includes a full, culturally appropriate literacy/numeracy curriculum created by our software partner onebillion
  • Tablet sessions supplement teacher-led instruction with children learning at their own pace
  • Data from tablets fuel continuous improvement of software and implementation model
  • Annual cost per child is less than $7 and declining

Designed to overcome systemic barriers and serve children in the most difficult environments

As a result Imagine and onebillion offer an evidence-based approach

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Imagine is working with government partners to roll out the program in:

  • Malawi
  • Sierra Leone
  • Tanzania

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Governments began to take notice

Malawi

Tanzania

Burkina Faso

Ghana

Liberia

Sierra Leone

Senegal

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Research During Scaling

Avoiding the typical attenuation of impacts as the program expands

  • Our research now has two main objectives
    1. Measuring whether quality of implementation and outcomes is maintained during scaling
    2. Informing continuous improvement
  • Multi-method research
    • Annual assessments of learning gains in literacy and numeracy (baseline and endline)
    • Endline stakeholder survey of perceptions of a broad range of impacts
    • Ongoing implementation research (observations and interviews) during site visits
    • Where available, comparing trends on national exams for tablet schools vs. matched comparison group
  • We also advocate for independent, large-scale rigorous research, after about 2 years of implementation experience at scale is gained

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Multi-method Research Provides a Comprehensive Picture

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Research Activity

What Do We Learn?

Imagine’s multi-method research in our 3 portfolio countries

Annual learning gains

Are learning gains matching prior research?

Is learning rising across multiple program years?

Are any areas for software improvement indicated?

Endline stakeholder survey

Perceptions of a broad range of impacts

Variations may indicate areas needing attention

Implementation research (IR)

Identification of challenges & promising practices feed continuous improvement

Comparative trends on national primary exams, where available in the early grades

Quasi-experimental impact on primary school learning

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Recommendations Based on Experience

  • Establish an initial efficacy base
  • Assume that scaling is a new beginning, not the end
  • Assume there is room for improvement of all aspects of the program
  • Design a multi-method research approach that provides a comprehensive view of implementation and outcomes
  • Plan and execute a continuous improvement feedback loop

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