Assessing the Impacts of Literacy Learning Games for Syrian Refugee Children: An executive overview of Antura and the Letters and Feed the Monster Impact Evaluations

The crisis in Syria has left 2.3 million children without an education, many of which are now living in displacement in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Greece, and Italy. There are many obstacles to the continuation of schooling for these children: the trauma they have suffered makes it more difficult for them to learn, while they are also being taught in a language they do not understand in their new country.

To address this growing education crisis, a coalition of actors (EduApp4Syria partnership) joined forces to make sure that Syrian children would have a platform to learn in Arabic. A competition was announced to create an open source learning game that builds basic literacy and addresses the psychological well-being of the user. The two prevailing winners of the competition were the apps “Antura and the Letters” and “Feed the Monster.”

This report provides an overview of the impact evaluations of the two learning apps. These evaluations sought to assess the impact of the game on user’s literary skills and their psychosocial well-being, while also evaluating each game’s user-friendliness and ability to engage with children.

Alongside the Executive Overview, are two Impact and Technical Evaluations of each respective game.