An online language learning app recently sent me an email telling me that I had made it sad. I did this by failing to follow instructions to interact with the daily lessons, and now the app was disappointed in me.
Despite the pleas, this app has failed to entice me back into the world of language learning and I have deleted it from my phone. In spite of the carefully designed nudges, the awards and endless celebrations, I quickly found it boring.
So, what would a good learning app be like? An interesting way of evaluating the value of the online experiences that we might use in the classroom has been designed by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and colleagues in their paper Putting Education in “Educational” Apps: Lessons From the Science of Learning (2015).
Following what they describe as the “four pillars of the science of learning”, they suggest that we consider four qualities in an educational app to ensure that it is a purposeful and worthwhile experience for children.
Firstly, they suggest the app should be “active”: demanding minds-on involvement during the learning experience, in addition to any physical involvement, such as swiping or tapping the screen.
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Secondly, children should be engaged in the learning, going beyond simple memorisation to finding meaning in the learning, connecting new material to existing knowledge and expanding their current knowledge to create new conceptual understanding.
Drill and practice may foster rote learning of facts, but it is not likely to promote deeper conceptual understanding and it limits the impact of the experience. There should be clear learning goals and intentions and children need to be able to relate the content to their lives.
Finally, the researchers suggest that worthwhile educational apps should have a social element to them, helping the children interact in high-quality ways.
Online learning with an impact
Looking through this lens, I am not surprised that I was not enticed to maintain my language learning. I did not find it engaging - it was drill and practice, with the same activities repeated over and over again.
The language I was learning was not meaningful in terms of what it would allow me to do. I wanted to learn this language to be able to chat with people on holiday but was instead learning about how to describe “the girl’s trousers”. And finally, it lacked any social interaction - no speaking or listening.
The world of online learning is ever present and growing. Enabling our children to be able to take advantage of it means helping them to learn how to learn online.
Given that there is no statutory obligation to teach children how to navigate the online world, considering the four qualities outlined by Hirsh-Pasek and colleagues - active, engaging, meaningful and interactive - when selecting online learning experiences to use in our classrooms may help put the education back into online learning.
Megan Dixon is a doctoral student and associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University
