EduApp4Syria — Antura and the Letters & Feed the Monster Boost Literacy for Syrian Refugee Children in Jordan

The EduApp4Syria competition, funded by Norad and run by All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (USAID, World Vision Norway and the Australian government), was created to develop literacy apps for the millions of displaced Syrian children whose schooling had been interrupted.
Antura and the Letters (Cologne Game Lab, Germany) and Feed the Monster (Apps Factory, Romania) were the two prize-winning games — both offline, Arabic-language mobile games combining an engaging game loop with practice of foundational reading skills (letters, syllables, fluency).
A 2018 quasi-experimental evaluation in Jordan's Azraq refugee camp, led by INTEGRATED in collaboration with NYU's CREATE, tested the games with roughly 300 children aged 5–10 with little or no prior schooling. After a 27-hour play period, decoding of rare words improved 81% versus -11% for the control group, oral reading fluency rose 71% versus 0%, syllable reading 51% versus 8%, and letter-sound knowledge 34% versus 0%. Gains held across both genders and all tested age groups, though effects were concentrated in foundational decoding rather than comprehension.
Because the evaluation used a quasi-experimental (non-randomised) design in a single camp, and gains were strongest on foundational decoding rather than comprehension, the results should be read as promising but not conclusive evidence of generalisable literacy recovery.

Read the full analysis: https://colognegamelab.de/research/research-projects/the-antura-initiative/impact-evaluation/