Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/202855 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 81
Publisher: 
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza (DISCE), Milano
Abstract: 
The availability of cheap wi-fi internet connections has stimulated schools to adopt Web 2.0 platforms for teaching. Using social networks and micro-blogs, teachers aim to stimulate students' participation in school activities and their achievement. Although anecdotal evidence shows a high level of teacher satisfaction with these platforms, only a small number of studies has produced rigorous estimates of their effects on students' achievement. We contribute to the knowledge in this field by analyzing the impact of using micro-blogs as a teaching tool on the reading and comprehension skills of students. Thanks to a large-scale randomized controlled trial, we find that using Twitter to teach literature has an overall negative effect on students' average achievement, reducing performance on a standardized test score by about 25 to 40% of a standard deviation. The negative effect is heterogeneous with respect to some students' characteristics. More specifically, the use of this Web 2.0 application appears to have a stronger detrimental effect on students who usually perform better.
Subjects: 
ICT
education
literature performance
RCT
JEL: 
I21
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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