Children learn a concept with a digital app

GABRIELA RAYNAUDO; OLGA PERALTA

Mendoza

Workshop; International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development Regional Workshop; 2019

International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development

Educators and parents see great educational potential in technological devices. However, the available research regarding children?s learning with technology is scarce and extremely recent. With a pretest--intervention- posttest design, we compared three kinds of instructions using an app as a learning tool. The pre-test assessed children´s previous knowledge. The app was specially designed to teach and illustrate the biological concept of camouflage. Sixty four-years-old children were randomly assigned to three experimental groups: 1) recorded instruction, 2) live instruction, 3) guided instruction. The first group received a pre-recorded instruction. The second heard the same instruction, but in this case, it was given by the experimenter in person. The third group received an instruction, although based on the previous script; it included feedback and answers to children´s doubts and questions. The instructions had different levels of social presence being the first one the less social and the last one the most social. We analyzed the number of correct answers before and after the intervention as well as children?s individual performance. Regarding the answers, we only found significant pre-posttest differences in the third group. In the other two groups, the correct answers grew, not reaching statistical significance. However, when looking at children?s performance, we found significant differences in the groups with live and with guided instruction. Taken together, these results show that even though a few children learned with the app, most children needed the presence of an adult to guide them.