Educational Apps Ontology

Notari, Michele; Hielscher, Michael; King, Mark

doi:10.1007/978-981-10-0027-0_5

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In addition to the type of assessment outcome, primary studies often find that the nature of the counterfactual may influence the magnitude of mean effects. That is, when studies compare educational apps to an active placebo group Critical review and meta-analysis Meta-analysis of game-based literacy app, GraphoGame, found no significant main effect on word reading Notari et al (2016) Literature review Taxonomy to define educational apps Papadakis et al (2018) Content analysis Apps available through Google play promote rote learning rather than deeper conceptual understanding Griffith et al (2020) Narrative synthesis Apps for preschool-aged children confer an advantage in some domains (math) rather than a passive group that is untreated, the magnitude of the treatment contrast in student outcomes may be attenuated (Griffith et al, 2020;Xie et al, 2018). For example, intervention studies of educational apps in math can include active placebo group activities where children in the control condition receive a literacy app (e.g., Berkowitz et al, 2015), or vice versa (e.g., Neuman, 2015).…”

Section: Type Of Assessment Outcome Measure and Control Groupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measures Matter: A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Educational Apps on Preschool to Grade 3 Children’s Literacy and Math Skills

Kim

Gilbert

et al. 2021

AERA Open

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Thousands of educational apps are available to students, teachers, and parents, yet research on their effectiveness is limited. This meta-analysis synthesized findings from 36 intervention studies and 285 effect sizes evaluating the effectiveness of educational apps for preschool to Grade 3 children and the moderating role of methodological, participant, and intervention characteristics. Using random effects meta-regression with robust variance estimation, we summarized the overall impact of educational apps and examined potential moderator effects. First, results from rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental studies yielded a mean weighted effect size of +0.31 standard deviations on overall achievement and comparable effects in both math and literacy. Second, the positive overall effect masks substantial variability in app effectiveness, as meta-regression analyses revealed three significant moderators of treatment effects. Treatment effects were larger for studies involving preschool rather than K–3 students, for studies using researcher-developed rather than standardized outcomes, and for studies measuring constrained rather than unconstrained skills.

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Section: Type Of Assessment Outcome Measure and Control Groupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measures Matter: A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Educational Apps on Preschool to Grade 3 Children’s Literacy and Math Skills

Kim

Gilbert

et al. 2021

AERA Open

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“…An additional novel characteristic of smart mobile devices is that they could have many potential apps, many of which have been designated as educational and suitable for young-age children (Kucirkova, 2014; Papadakis, 2020). The marketing and target audience for app developers are educators and parents looking for apps to help children aged 3 to 6 years build early math and literacy skills (Guernsey and Levine, 2015a; Notari et al , 2016). Martens et al (2018), in their study, found that a simple search using the terms “A.B.C.” or “Alphabet” in the app store returned between 279 and 286 ABCs apps.…”

Section: Review Of Literature On App Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For these reasons, the “educational” app market is considered unregulated and untested, and teachers and parents are most likely to spend the most time and even money on educational apps without real educational value (Martens et al , 2018; Shing and Yuan, 2016). It is most likely that the most popular apps in the app stores’ educational category are not necessarily the most useful ones (Notari et al , 2016). Instead, it is possible that children, parents, and teachers may not use apps with real educational value (Chen et al , 2019).…”

Section: Review Of Literature On App Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The majority of educators, as well as parents, are no experts in media technology and pedagogy. Usually, non-pedagogical attributes such as app price, user ratings, and reviews, as well as the number of downloads, guide their decision regarding an app choice (Notari et al , 2016). This selection procedure yields little or no information on app quality (Stoyanov et al , 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tools for evaluating educational apps for young children: a systematic review of the literature

Papadakis

2020

ITSE

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Purpose This study, by critically analyzing material from multiple sources, aims to provide an overview of what is available on evaluation tools for educational apps for children. To realize this objective, a systematic literature review was conducted to search all English literature published after January 2010 in multiple electronic databases and internet sources. Various combinations of search strings were used due to database construction differences, while the results were cross-referenced to discard repeated references, obtaining those that met the criteria for inclusion. Design/methodology/approach The present study was conducted according to the methods provided by Khan et al. (2003) and Thomé et al. (2016). The whole procedure included four stages: planning the review, identifying relevant studies in the literature, critical analysis of the literature, summarizing and interpreting the findings (Figure 1). Furthermore, in this analysis, a well-known checklist, PRISMA, was also used as a recommendation (Moher et al., 2015). Findings These review results reveal that, although there are several evaluation tools, in their majority they are not considered adequate to help teachers and parents to evaluate the pedagogical affordances of educational apps correctly and easily. Indeed, most of these tools are considered outdated. With the emergence of new issues such as General Data Protection Regulation, the quality criteria and methods for assessing children's products need to be continuously updated and adapted (Stoyanov et al., 2015). Some of these tools might be considered as good beginnings, but their “limited dimensions make generalizable considerations about the worth of apps” (Cherner, Dix and Lee, 2014, p. 179). Thus, there is a strong need for effective evaluation tools to help parents and teachers when choosing educational apps (Callaghan and Reich, 2018). Research limitations/implications Even though this work is performed by following the systematic mapping guideline, threats to the validity of the results presented still exist. Although custom strings that contained a rich collection of data were used to search for papers, potentially relevant publications that would have been missed by the advanced search might exist. It is recommended that at least two different reviewers should independently review titles, abstracts and later full papers for exclusion (Thomé et al., 2016). In this study, only one reviewer – the author – selected the papers and did the review. In the case of a single researcher, Kitchenham (2004) recommends that the single reviewer should consider discussing included and excluded papers with an expert panel. The researcher, following this recommendation, discussed the inclusion and exclusion procedure with an expert panel of two professionals with research experience from the Department of (removed for blind review). To deal with publication bias, the researcher in conjunction with the expert panel used the search strategies identified by Kitchenham (2004) including: Grey literature, conference proceedings, communicating with experts working in the field for any unpublished literature. Practical implications The purpose of this study was not to advocate any evaluation tool. Instead, the study aims to make parents, educators and software developers aware of the various evaluation tools available and to focus on their strengths, weaknesses and credibility. This study also highlights the need for a standardized app evaluation (Green et al., 2014) via reliable tools, which will allow anyone interested to evaluate apps with relative ease (Lubniewski et al., 2018). Parents and educators need a reliable, fast and easy-to-use tool for the evaluation of educational apps that is more than a general guideline (Lee and Kim, 2015). A new generation of evaluation tools would also be used as a reference among the software developers, designers to create educational apps with real educational value. Social implications The results of this study point to the necessity of creating new evaluation tools based on research, either in the form of rubrics or checklists to help educators and parents to choose apps with real educational value. Originality/value However, to date, no systematic review has been published summarizing the available app evaluation tools. This study, by critically analyzing material from multiple sources, aims to provide an overview of what is available on evaluation tools for educational apps for children.

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“…Xu Peng (2017)defines educational APP as software for human mobile learning services [6]. Notari, Hielscher, and King (2016)argue that educational apps are applications that implement learning-related goals [7].…”

Section: Concept Of Educational Appmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Educational APP

Luo¹,

Yi²

2019

dtssehs

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The application of mobile web application (APP) technology in the field of education informationization is gradually enriched. However, according to the relevant literature reviewed, there is still a lack of systematic and comprehensive research in this field at home and abroad. The problems of educational APP in education are expounded by summarizing the development of mobile network technology, the meaning of educational informationization, and the classification of educational APP. By summarizing the research status and trends of APP applied to education, it can provide useful reference.

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Educational Apps Ontology

Cited by 16 publications

References 6 publications

Measures Matter: A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Educational Apps on Preschool to Grade 3 Children’s Literacy and Math Skills

Measures Matter: A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Educational Apps on Preschool to Grade 3 Children’s Literacy and Math Skills

Tools for evaluating educational apps for young children: a systematic review of the literature

A Review of Educational APP

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