Learning From Home: An Experimental Evaluation of Same- Language Subtitling Program

First-generation learners may not receive adequate parental inputs for education at home and this can have a particularly adverse effect due to school closures during pandemics and disasters. This proposal development project will explore the effects of a home-based education technology intervention on adult and child literacy and further study the extent to which relaxation of the maternal literacy constraint improves child learning. Taking advantage of the penetration of smartphones and mobile internet in urban India, we study this through a smartphone-based intervention that delivers entertaining video content that uses same-language subtitles targeted at the level of both the child and the mother. If effective, the intervention can serve as a pedagogical tool to improve foundational literacy and reading skills among children and adults and can be cost-effectively scaled up on television to reach the masses.