Can Educational Software Support Learning in the Global North and South Equally? A Comparison Case Study

Nowadays, many educational software applications are designed with input only from specific user groups from developed countries in the Global North, without considering the needs of users living in the Global South, potentially compromising their effectiveness. To contribute to the understanding of how educational software influences learning depending on the country of origin of end-users, this paper reported results of learning performance and user experience (UX) from 176 students from Ecuador in the Global South, and compared those from 196 students in the United Kingdom in the Global North. Results in the Ecuadorian sample showed that there were some significant differences on the students’ perception of software usability and their self-reported measure of user engagement, but no significant differences were found on their learning gains unlike the sample of students from the UK. Comparisons between the schools in the two countries showed some differences in the students’ attitudes and motivations towards learning science prior to the study. We discussed how these could have influenced students’ learning performance and UX.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Pamela Andrade

Effie L-C. Law

Conference

Publication date: July 2021

Publication date (Print): July 2021

Pages: 294-305

Affiliations

[0001]University of Leicester

Leicester - United Kingdom

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2021.32

SO-VID: 93f8339f-5f3c-4335-999c-70af0506937c

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: 34th British HCI Conference

Conference acronym: HCI2021

Conference number: 34

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 20th - 21st July 2021

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Post-pandemic HCI – Living Digitally

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2021.32

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] J. M. Carroll (1997). Human-computer interaction: psychology as a science of design. Annual review of psychology, 48(1), 61-83.

[2] R. Charlotte Smith, H. Winschiers-Theophilus, A. Paula Kambunga, & S. Krishnamurthy (2020, June). Decolonizing Participatory Design: Memory Making in Namibia. In Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference 2020-Participation (s) Otherwise-Volume 1 (pp. 96-106).

[3] M. Wong-Villacres, A. Alvarado Garcia, & J. Tibau (2020, April). Reflections from the classroom and beyond: Imagining a decolonized hci education. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14).

[4] P. Andrade, E. L. C. Law, J. C. Farah, & D. Gillet (2020, December). Evaluating the effects of introducing three gamification elements in STEM educational software for secondary schools. In 32nd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 220-232).

[5] N. Postman (2011). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. Vintage.

[6] Ons.gov.uk. 2020. Internet access – households and individuals, Great Britain: 2020. [online] Available at: <http://www.ons.gov.uk> [Accessed 10 April 2021].

[7] Ecuadorencifras.gob.ec. 2020. TIC 2018. [online] Available at: <www.ecuadorencifras.gob.ec/estadisticas/> [Accessed 10 April 2021].

[8] D. Choi, & J. Kim (2004). Why people continue to play online games: In search of critical design factors to increase customer loyalty to online contents. CyberPsychology & behavior, 7(1), 11-24.

[9] N. Burbules (2018). Watch IT: The risks and promises of information technologies for education. Routledge.

[10] S. Deterding, M. Sicart, L. Nacke, K. O'Hara, & D. Dixon (2011). Gamification. using game-design elements in non-gaming contexts. In CHI'11 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2425-2428).

[11] D. Dicheva, C. Dichev, G. Agre, & G. Angelova (2015). Gamification in education: A systematic mapping study. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 18(3), 75-88.

[12] M. Sailer, J. U. Hense, S. K. Mayr, & H. Mandl (2017). How gamification motivates: An experimental study of the effects of specific game design elements on psychological need satisfaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 371-380.

[13] P. Fotaris, T. Mastoras, R. Leinfellner, & Y. Rosunally (2016). Climbing up the Leaderboard: An Empirical Study of Applying Gamification Techniques to a Computer Programming Class. Electronic Journal of e-learning, 14(2), 94-110.

[14] P. Denny (2013, April). The effect of virtual achievements on student engagement. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 763-772).

[15] E. D. Mekler, F. Brühlmann, K. Opwis, & A. N. Tuch (2013). Disassembling gamification: the effects of points and meaning on user motivation and performance. In CHI'13 extended abstracts on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1137-1142).

[16] B. S. Bloom (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Vol. 1: Cognitive domain. New York: McKay, 20, 24.

[17] J. Campbell, & R. E. Mayer (2009). Questioning as an instructional method: Does it affect learning from lectures?. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 23(6), 747-759.

[18] A. King (1990). Enhancing peer interaction and learning in the classroom through reciprocal questioning. American Educational Research Journal, 27(4), 664-687.

[19] M. Sailer, & L. Homner (2020). The gamification of learning: A meta-analysis.

[20] Generationunlimited.org. 2021. Digital Connectivity. [online] Available at: <https://www.generationunlimited.org/our-work/promising-ideas-innovation/digital-connectivity> [Accessed 16 April 2021].

[21] B. Martin (2005). The information society and the digital divide: some North-South comparisons. International journal of education and development using ICT, 1(4), 30-41.

[22] J. H. Graafland (2018). New technologies and 21st century children: Recent trends and outcomes.

[23] F. Gottschalk (2019). Impacts of technology use on children: Exploring literature on the brain, cognition and well-being.

[24] P. Kind, K. Jones, & P. Barmby (2007). Developing attitudes towards science measures. International journal of science education, 29(7), 871-893.

[25] S. M. Glynn, P. Brickman, N. Armstrong, & G. Taasoobshirazi (2011). Science motivation questionnaire II: Validation with science majors and nonscience majors. Journal of research in science teaching, 48(10), 1159-1176.

[26] F. Guay, R. J. Vallerand, & C. Blanchard (2000). On the assessment of situational intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: The Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS). Motivation and emotion, 24(3), 175-213.

[27] J. Brooke (1996). Sus: a “quick and dirty” usability. Usability evaluation in industry, 189.

[28] H. L. O’Brien, P. Cairns, & M. Hall (2018). A practical approach to measuring user engagement with the refined user engagement scale (UES) and new UES short form. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 112, 28-39.

[29] J. Hamari, J. Koivisto, & H. Sarsa (2014, January). Does gamification work?--a literature review of empirical studies on gamification. In 2014 47th Hawaii international conference on system sciences (pp. 3025-3034). Ieee.

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