Often, educational technology design seems to be driven by market factors (e.g., fun, money) and perhaps design research (e.g., game environments), but rarely effectively accounts for research on how children develop understandings of the target content. This leaves practitioners short of high-quality technology tools (e.g., practice apps instead of developmentally appropriate learning apps). We can't expect tool/game designers, content researchers, design researchers, and practitioners to be experts in all these areas. However, we should work together throughout development, testing, and implementation. Have you had any success with this sort of collaboration? Are there avenues you would like to pursue? What would support these investigations?
Yes, I have completed my research work by taking help of a designer and the teachers who were made to teach through technology. This was done successfully at school and teacher education level. In our organisation, its a practice now that whenever we want to have a shift from traditional learning to technology based learning we have to go through all these practices of design, development and research and all this is being done in a collaborated way only otherwise it was proved to be a flop show.
Hi Stephen,
This is a question that raises its head in my research on mathematics apps. I don't know of any easy solution. Many app designers are motivated by profit - and so, as I discuss in my 2013/2014 articles - see below - any information from the app store is best viewed as an infomercial. They promise a great deal more than they deliver. I think a possible solution is to use apps from suppliers who have developed a body of apps - e.g. any of the group of Ventura Apps. The other solution is for teachers to search for academic reviews of apps and manipulatives ( such as the work you and Patricia Moyer Packenham and myself) are conducting. Whilst the app store remains a largely commercial enterprise I think that finding quality mathematics apps might be problematic.
Cheers, Kevin
Larkin, K. (2015). The Search for Fidelity in Geometry Apps: An Exercise in Futility? In M. Marshman, V. Geiger & A. Bennison (Eds.) Mathematics Education in the Margins. (Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia). Sunshine Coast, QLD.
Larkin, K. (2014). Ipad Apps that promote mathematical knowledge? Yes, they exist! Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, 19(2), 28-32.
Larkin, K. (2013). Mathematics Education. Is there an App for that? In V. Steinle, L. Ball & C. Bardini (Eds.), Mathematics education: Yesterday, today and tomorrow (Proceedings of the 36th annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia) (pp. 426-433). Melbourne, VIC: MERGA.
Mool Raj: Collaboration from the outset sounds like a great way to go. How do coordinate these group efforts?
Kevin: You make a good point about finding quality apps and sticking to a consistent body of work when possible. For my own research and projects with colleagues back at Utah State University, we have been in touch with designers to try to make/tweak apps to be more mathematically accurate and perhaps even collect/share data for analysis. Some small developers have made tweaks along the way, and a few have expressed interest in teaming up. However, we tend to run into money and time troubles. It takes quite a bit of money to develop an engaging app even without the substance and data collection we researchers may want, while the app design and math/tech education research fields run on very different time scales with drastically different expected products. I wonder if Promotion & Tenure committees would value such collaborations...
Hi Stephen! Thank you for your invitation to this topic. I am just now in the middle of an study where I am working with pedagoges that will implement our touch-screen app, Fingu, as a part of their regular curricular. My thought is that it is important to work closely with the pedagoges and the children to see how the app can be used as a complement to other educational resourses and how to addapt the app to different childrens needs. In my study I focus on childrens methods to solve arithmetical tasks in the game and how they develop over time. One of my intentions in this new study is to use my analysis of childrens methods to inform the pedagoges what they can focus when it comes to effective and ineffective methods and how to addapt the game to different childrens skills and needs.
Stephen, that's such an important question! And one I don't know the answer to - I strove to be the expert in game design, content, and content learning/pedagogy for my dissertation game, but a) that was exhausting, and b) I kept the need for practitioner expertise out of it by designing for informal learning instead of for classrooms. For future products for informal learning in the near future, I plan on relying on Filament Games and their excellent learning game design chops - if, of course, we can get the grants!
In the long term - i.e., after tenure - then I'd like to pull a team together that includes classroom teachers, and begin looking at designing math games in the classroom. However, I suspect that team-based work will be more complex and time-consuming, so I'm waiting until I get tenure to embark on that journey. I suspect that tenure committees are focused on publications far more than products - at least in our field, where products are rare - so speed is of the essence, unfortunately...
How about organizing a forum for new research concerning the areas you've mentioned and awarding the best of them while also encouraging the other participants by placing all of them on a board of "Educational Technology Reformers"?This way, designers, researchers and scientists will be encouraged to do more even if it means they not winning anything. Its just an opinion.
Elisabeth: Thanks for replying! I'm glad you are working to integrate Fingu into the classroom. I'm also embarking on a study involving Fingu and ways students respond during the tasks, but we aren't explicitly considering other pedagogical factors and resources. However, we will use what we find as a foundation for professional development, during which teachers will have more input. Helping teachers develop ways to effectively technology is definitely keep to keeping the technology relevant and integral, rather than supplementary or even perfunctory.
Caro: And what great design work you do! Most of us math-y people lack that design expertise, but Elisabeth is part of a team that definitely has it, too. We're also looking for grants that can support the tech side of development. The focus of tenure on publications over progress is certainly common. We must build teams to conduct ambitiously complex, connected research, but who has time for teams until tenure? And once we have tenure, how many of us are bogged down, er, happily immersed in other responsibilities? Perhaps we could partner up to pursue some ideas and multi-site grants?
Desmond: We appreciate your contribution! A forum for new research sounds like a great idea. It would be wonderful to have contributions across the disciplines, particularly in an accessible environment where practitioners also felt welcome to participate. I think Caro hit on one of the snags, in that those of us who are pre-tenure never feel we have the time to do something so ambitious when we have to churn out high quantities of publications--while teaching, etc.--if it doesn't fit with our tenure evaluators' conceptions of productivity. Perhaps you know someone with tenure who could lead, with junior faculty collaborating?
Stephen, we should definitely consider some collaboration in the future! A nice multi-site grant where we all take different approaches to designing for math learning would be awesome - say, one focused on designing for informal learning, one for formal learning, and one for museums or some other middle ground? That'd be sweet!
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