Educational apps can be considered a dominant medium for providing educational content to children. Parents are major stakeholders and mediators in the selection of apps (Dias & Brito, 2021). It is critical to know how they choose apps for their children and understand what indicates a quality educational app, as well‐designed apps can support and enhance children's learning process. An online study with parents was conducted to identify parents' most dominant needs while selecting apps for their children. Parents' app selection behaviour was investigated leveraging Uses and Gratifications theory. Parents viewed 10 mock math apps that replicated the App Store presentation format. Five apps included educational benchmarks (eg, feedback) and five contained educational buzzwords (eg, interactive). Immediately following each app, parents provided value judgements of the app by stating whether they would download the app or not, rating it on a 5‐point‐scale, stating how much they would be willing to pay, and explaining why they chose to download the app or not. Results from paired‐samples t‐tests, and repeated‐measures ANOVAs indicated that parents value educational benchmarks over buzzwords suggesting that parents are primarily seeking apps that meet their children's educational needs. Parents' app needs seem to align with some of the research on what makes a good educational app. What is already known about this topic Touch screen devices can enhance learning outcomes for children, if well designed educational applications are used (Camilleri & Camilleri, 2019; Cohen et al., 2011). Five educational benchmarks have been identified as indicators of app quality that parents can use to distinguish well designed apps (Dubé et al., 2020); having a development team that involves educators, possessing a guiding curriculum (Vaala et al., 2015), being based on a learning theory (Kebritchi & Hirumi, 2008), containing scaffolded learning, and providing feedback (Callaghan & Reich, 2018; Cayton‐Hodges et al., 2015). Uses and Gratifications theory suggests that people use the media to satisfy their psychological needs and to achieve their personal goals (Katz et al., 1973). What this paper adds The study used Uses and Gratifications theory to identify parents' most dominant needs while selecting apps for their children. With the assumption that parents select apps based on their anticipated gratifications or parental need fulfilment (Broekman et al., 2016, 2018). Different features of the apps are presented in the forms of images and text descriptions in the App Store. The study investigated which features parents value when selecting apps from the App Store by including educational benchmarks and buzzwords in the images and text descriptions of the apps. Parents valued educational benchmarks over buzzwords. Thus, parents' app needs seem to align with the research‐based signifiers of app quality. Parents valued apps that feature development team, scaffolding, and guiding curriculums more than those with central learn...

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Researchers recommend that parents look for five benchmarks as indicators of quality educational apps (ie, scaffolding, curriculum, development team, feedback, learning theory), yet results show that parents undervalue some of these benchmarks. The current study examined if a short video‐based intervention would enhance parents' value‐judgements of apps featuring the five educational benchmarks. In original and modified app experiments (n = 100; n = 101), parents of children 4–11 years old were randomly assigned to watch either a 9‐minute video that detailed how the five benchmarks augment learning, or a 2‐minute control video. Parents evaluated 10 simulated apps containing either benchmarks or buzzwords. The original app experiment shows that a brief intervention can help parents identify quality educational apps via the benchmarks, but the modified app experiment suggests it only works if developers are using specific keywords in app descriptions. Helping parents select quality educational apps is more complicated than simply telling them what to look for. What is already known about this topic Parents have a main role in selecting apps and deciding on how often children use them; however, they have difficulty evaluating an app's educational potential in a market mixed with high‐ and low‐quality products that lacks a standard for including educational apps on the App Store. There are five research‐based benchmarks that are indicators of quality educational apps. These include apps created by an interdisciplinary development team, having a guiding curriculum with a clear purpose, including scaffolding and feedback, and being based on a learning theory. However, parents are not valuing all of these educational benchmarks equally. Educational videos disseminated via YouTube have become an established medium to enhance people's knowledge. Mayer's cognitive theory of multimedia learning, which suggests that people learn better when there is both auditory and visual information given together, is a framework used to design educational videos. What this paper adds This study leveraged a useful, accessible medium (ie, educational YouTube videos) to make research on educational apps accessible enough such that it could influence parents' app selection. Parents of children aged 4–11 years‐old viewed either an educational intervention‐ or control‐video and assessed educational apps through measures that replicate how consumers evaluate apps on the App Store (ie, their willingness to download the app, how much they would pay, their rating, and ranking). Original and modified app experiments demonstrate that a brief, educational video designed using key features from Mayer's multimedia theory can improve parents' app selection. In the original app experiment, parents in the intervention group are valuing the guiding curriculum and development team benchmarks over others, which may be due to the structure of the intervention video (ie, worked‐examples immediately after pre‐training of benchmarks). In the modified...

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