Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0 Author-Name: Gian Paolo Barbetta Author-X-Name-First: Gian Paolo Author-X-Name-Last: Barbetta Author-Email: gianpaolo.barbetta@unicatt.it Author-Workplace-Name: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Author-Workplace-Name: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Author-Name: Paolo Canino Author-X-Name-First: Paolo Author-X-Name-Last: Canino Author-Name: Stefano Cima Author-X-Name-First: Stefano Author-X-Name-Last: Cima Title: Let’s tweet again? The impact of social networks on literature achievement in high school students: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial. Abstract: The availability of cheap wi-fi internet connections has stimulated schools to adopt Web 2.0 platforms for teaching. Using social networks and micro-blogs, teachers aim to stimulate students’ participation in school activities and their achievement. Although anecdotal evidence shows a high level of teacher satisfaction with these platforms, only a small number of studies has produced rigorous estimates of their effects on students’ achievement. We contribute to the knowledge in this field by analyzing the impact of using micro-blogs as a teaching tool on the reading and comprehension skills of students. Thanks to a large-scale randomized controlled trial, we find that using Twitter to teach literature has an overall negative effect on students’ average achievement, reducing performance on a standardized test score by about 25 to 40% of a standard deviation. The negative effect is heterogeneous with respect to some students’ characteristics. More specifically, the use of this Web 2.0 application appears to have a stronger detrimental effect on students who usually perform better. Length: 33 Creation-Date: 2019-05 File-URL: http://dipartimenti.unicatt.it/economia-finanza-def081.pdf File-Format: Application/pdf File-Function: First version, 2019 Number: def081 Classification-JEL: I21. Keywords: ICT, education, literature performance, RCT. Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie1:def081