Abstract: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. Par… Show more
“…Moreover, Taylor et al (2022) found that top‐rated apps on app review websites (ie, Common Sense Media, Good App Guide) contain more opportunities for feedback; but, these apps were more likely to provide low‐quality, retrospective error‐rate feedback (cf., immediate, constructive feedback). Undervaluing learning theory aligns with previous work, as this benchmark may be too abstract for parents (Montazami et al, 2022a) and is also undervalued by elementary educators (Montazami et al, 2022b). Since the original apps contained these specific terms (ie, feedback and learning theory), parents may have been attributing these negative connotations to them (ie, unbeneficial feedback, confusion).…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 82%
“…This notion stems from other educational literature in which learners are taught to understand the concept, or schema, beyond the keywords (eg, Powell & Fuchs, 2018). Given that previous research found that parents value some benchmarks more than others (Montazami et al, 2022a), these experiments also investigate if the intervention's effectiveness differs among the benchmarks. As such, two central questions guided the research:RQ1.…”
Section: The Current Investigationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…To address the lack of standards for quality apps, researchers propose that parents look to five educational benchmarks as indicators of quality (Dubé et al, 2020;Montazami et al, 2022aMontazami et al, , 2022b. These include being created by a development team consisting of educators, providing feedback and scaffolding, and being based on a guiding curriculum and learning theory.…”
Section: Educational Benchmarksmentioning
confidence: 99%
“… These are the same stimuli used for prior studies on parents' and educators' app selection. For an in‐depth description of the creation of these stimuli, see Montazami et al, 2022a, Montazami et al, 2022b. …”
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...
“…Moreover, Taylor et al (2022) found that top‐rated apps on app review websites (ie, Common Sense Media, Good App Guide) contain more opportunities for feedback; but, these apps were more likely to provide low‐quality, retrospective error‐rate feedback (cf., immediate, constructive feedback). Undervaluing learning theory aligns with previous work, as this benchmark may be too abstract for parents (Montazami et al, 2022a) and is also undervalued by elementary educators (Montazami et al, 2022b). Since the original apps contained these specific terms (ie, feedback and learning theory), parents may have been attributing these negative connotations to them (ie, unbeneficial feedback, confusion).…”
Section: Discussionsupporting
confidence: 82%
“…This notion stems from other educational literature in which learners are taught to understand the concept, or schema, beyond the keywords (eg, Powell & Fuchs, 2018). Given that previous research found that parents value some benchmarks more than others (Montazami et al, 2022a), these experiments also investigate if the intervention's effectiveness differs among the benchmarks. As such, two central questions guided the research:RQ1.…”
Section: The Current Investigationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…To address the lack of standards for quality apps, researchers propose that parents look to five educational benchmarks as indicators of quality (Dubé et al, 2020;Montazami et al, 2022aMontazami et al, , 2022b. These include being created by a development team consisting of educators, providing feedback and scaffolding, and being based on a guiding curriculum and learning theory.…”
Section: Educational Benchmarksmentioning
confidence: 99%
“… These are the same stimuli used for prior studies on parents' and educators' app selection. For an in‐depth description of the creation of these stimuli, see Montazami et al, 2022a, Montazami et al, 2022b. …”
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...
“…EdTech design can disrupt this balance with features that provide or constrain the space for adult-child shared and independent interaction. Parents (Montazami et al, 2022a) and teachers (Montazami et al, 2022b) are cognizant of the qualitative differences in EdTech and the choices they offer to children and have expressed the need for more guidance on the types of EdTech that optimally support children's learning and development. Our article taps into that need and considers the implications of children's agency for selection and implementation of EdTech in classrooms, with attention to EdTech design that is most conducive to children's active participation in learning.…”
Advancing learners’ agency is a key educational goal. The advent of personalized EdTech, which automatically tailor learning environments to individual learners, gives renewed relevance to the topic. EdTech researchers and practitioners are confronted with the same basic question: What is the right amount of agency to give to learners during their interactions with EdTech? This question is even more relevant for younger learners. Our aim in this paper is twofold: First, we outline and synthesize the ways in which agency is conceptualized in three key learning disciplines (philosophy, education, and psychology). We show that there are different types and levels of agency and various prerequisites for the effective exercise of agency and that these undergo developmental change. Second, we provide guiding principles for how agency can be designed for in EdTech for children. We propose an agency personalization loop in which the level of agency provided by the EdTech is assigned in an adaptive manner to strike a balance between allowing children to freely choose learning content and assigning optimal content to them. Finally, we highlight some examples from practice.
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