Dive Brief:

• A new study out of Northwestern University found that students who shared iPads performed better on an end-of-year exam than those in 1:1 classrooms or with no iPads at all.
• The study, which focused on kindergarten classrooms in three Chicago-area schools, was conducted by Communications Ph.D. student Courtney Blackwell.
• According to Blackwell, students in 1:1 settings scored 24% higher on the end of their exam than they did in the beginning of the year. Students without iPads improved their scores by 20% and students who shared their iPads increased their scores by 28%.

Dive Insight:

The study highlights the power of collaboration and should give administrators pause before pushing for a 1:1 learning environment. Along with those findings, however, it also raises questions about technology in general. The students without iPads and the students in 1:1 environments didn't score too different from each other, according to Blackwell.

There has been a lot of pressure on districts to make the costly move to 1:1 deployments lately, and while Blackwell's study was relatively small (dealing with only one grade in one district), it provides a great springboard for replication elsewhere. Ultimately, it breeds questions of who is really behind the 1:1 push: Is it educators and researchers, or tech and curriculum vendors? Many would likely argue the latter.