designed/implemented software interventions is echoed in other studies (Banerjee et al. 2007; Carrillo, Onofa, and Ponce 2011). In a meta-review of all rigorously evaluated education interventions, McEwan (2015) finds the largest effects for interventions involving instructional technology. In a similar review, Conn (2014) considers “pedagogical interventions” to be the most effective subset of education interventions, and many of these pedagogical interventions are in fact computer-assisted learning programs.

In this paper, we examine the potential effectiveness of digital technologies for student learning by focusing on non-interactive eReaders. The experiment is explicitly designed to disentangle the content effect from the reciprocity effect. Given that the eReaders are non-interactive, we are only able to examine a very limited technology enabled pedagogical intervention with no room for active feedback or targeting of content. We test the impact of providing eReaders with or without curriculum content. In a third arm, we also examine whether provision of other remedial content can usefully enhance learning outcomes. The paper measures the impact of digital technology on both learning and participation in the next level of secondary schooling.

We conducted a nested randomized control trial (RCT) in which eReaders with different types of content were provided to Grade 8 students in Lagos, Nigeria. A study sample of 497 students were randomly assigned to one of the following groups - a control group that received nothing and three treatment groups that each received eReaders with either: a) only non-curriculum reading material; b) non-curriculum reading material _and_ curriculum textbooks; and c) non-curriculum material, curriculum textbooks _and_ supplementary curriculum-relevant material. We examine short-term student outcomes after a six-month exposure to eReaders and longer-term outcomes obtained from a student tracking survey 2.5 year after the experiment.

For the purposes of benchmarking the impact of eReaders on school participation against a nontechnology intervention, we implement a low-cost ‘information’ intervention (Jensen 2010). A random sub-sample of treatment students was assigned–orthogonal to eReader randomization–to receive an information intervention. Students assigned to the information treatment group received a short script on the expected returns to education in the Nigerian labor market. This intervention is extremely low-cost and scalable. As such it provides a useful benchmark for a more expensive digital technology intervention.

Overall, we found no significant impact of any eReader treatment on learning outcomes in reading, math, and non-Verbal reasoning. However, eReaders with curriculum content improve reading outcomes for students with no text-books (estimates are large but imprecise). In contrast, among students with textbooks, eReaders with curriculum led to no gains in reading comprehension or a small and imprecise decline in math scores. Further, and consistent with Malamud and PopEleches (2011), eReaders without curriculum material led to a decline in overall reading and math scores. These results are suggestive that learning impacts of eReaders depend on the relevance of content delivered and especially whether or not the student has access to alternative forms of the same content (textbooks).

We do not find systematic impacts on student aspirations or attitudes. However, eReader provision appears to impact student retention. Around 2.5 years after the experiment ended, we were able to trace 89 percent of the original sample (442 out of 497 students). At this time, we find that students in any of the e-Reader arms are about 5 percentage points more likely to stay in school. This effect 4