An Interactive And Platform Independent M-learning Game For Early Grade Learning

Abstract

There have been major efforts by the Kenyan government to implement the Education for All (EFA) goal no.6 which focuses on improving quality of education in both literacy and numeracy as well as the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number 2, 3rd target) which stipulates Universal primary education through ensuring that boys and girls everywhere get compulsory primary education by 2012 through ensuring Free Primary Education (FPE) initiative of 2003.Despite the massive gains made by these efforts, it’s apparent that the education sector still faces other challenges. The challenges include compromised quality of education owing to inadequacies such as low teachers to pupils’ ratio and as a result pupils tend to cram instead of understanding concepts taught. Pupils are forced to adopt memorization of facts and procedures instead of increasing their understanding of math skills and concepts as well as literacy. This is partly caused by high student to teacher ratio hence there is no personalized attention given to students. This project developed of an interactive mLearning application to facilitate provision of personalized learning methods in form of interactive games for teaching pupils of 5to 11 years of age on how to perform numeracy and literacy tasks. The study aimed at fostering innovative learning approaches and an environment for early grade learners who are currently not well served by existing education systems. The study also sought to bridge the digital gap between those who access traditional learning methods and those with alternative, interactive learning methods using computing devices such as mobile devices and personal computers (PCs). The study sought to develop a hybrid mobile application which combines both the advantages of native mobile apps and mobile web apps. Since there is no standard evaluation technique for interactive multimedia learning applications, the evaluation of this learning system was based on its usability, accessibility, didactic effects and the number of modules requiring modification or implementation. The measurements were based on students’ participation, content understanding, and students’ ability to solve the presented problems. Due to the complexity of conducting mobile learning research among early grade learners, six (6) research assistants were conscripted who doubled up as proxy respondents to facilitate filling in the Questionnaires which were used for collecting learner responses and observations. The evaluation of usability and accessibility was performed by means of the SUS evaluation tool adapted from the SUS questionnaire developed John Brooke in 1986. The average SUS score for this study was 78.5% indicating user satisfaction considering usability, learnability, and playability of the Mobile Learning Game.