place-value on 2 questions and random strategy of the five questions on the MuTAT. As mentioned in Section 7.2.6, Mark’s strategy on paper cannot be accurately determined since he did not show any workings. Analysis of the strategy output from the MuTAT suggests that he may require more support in learning to recognise relationships between numbers and working more strategically. This result suggests that the strategies used on paper may not be different from the one used on the application. However this finding cannot be extrapolated to all students as most of them did not completely present their workings on paper.
Furthermore, observations made during the study suggest that the school students genuinely enjoyed using the MuTAT and were impressed with the functionalities. Students demonstrated positive attitudes while using the tool. For example, when some of the students were working on the tool they responded with glowing comments such as “I like this”, “cool”, “it is fun”. Generally, the students liked the look and feel of the tool and found navigation “nice and easy” and appeared to be comfortable solving problems on it.
7.3
Study 3: Teachers’ Study
The previous section described the study conducted with students. This section presents the study that eplored the level of acceptance and opinions of teachers regarding the MuTAT prototype. Teachers’ confidence and attitudes toward computer technology integration, and willingness to undertake a change incorporating technology use for student learning is necessary (Levin and Wadmany, 2008) . A study of their attitudes and opinions will provide in-depth insights on the usefulness or otherwise of the tool.
The goals of the study are to:
1. find out whether the teachers consider the tool to be useful
2. ascertain the attitudes of the teachers after working with the tool
3. obtain feedback that can guide future development efforts
7.3.1
Participants
The target population for the teacher study was primary school teachers. The participants should have taught or are currently teaching primary school classes. They will be able to provide an objective evaluation based on their experiences. Getting access to teachers in the schools was difficult because of their busy schedule. However, the annual BETT show which
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brings together teachers from different schools provided an opportunity to access and interact with teachers from various schools (bettshow.com, 2015). The study was conducted during the 2015 edition of the event. A stand was set up and the teachers were invited to work with the software. The profile of participants is presented in Table 7.5.
Table 7.5 Participants
Teacher Number
Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) - age range from birth to 5 years old
1
Key Stage 1 (KS1) also known as Year 1 and Year 2. Students pupils are aged between 5 and 7
1
Key Stage 2 (KS2) normally known as Year 3, Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6. Students are aged between 7 and 11.
2
Key Stage 3 (KS3) also known as Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 . Students are aged between 11 and 14.
3
Key Stage 4 (KS4) also known Year 10 and 11 . Students are aged between 14 and 16
2
Others 1
From the table, it can be seen that a total of 10 participants participated in the study. Nine of them were active teachers the tenth participant was an administrator who was involved with teaching.
7.3.2
Task design
The task design is similar to that in Section 7.2. The teachers were invited to work with the MuTAT to solve the problems. After completing this, they were asked to fill a questionnaire soliciting their opinions and thoughts. The questionnaire can be found in Appendix D.
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7.3.3
Results and Discussions
The questions are grouped into three categories. The first investigates the perceived usefulness of the MuTAT. The second examines the attitudes of the teachers, and the third invites the teachers to express their thoughts and comments qualitatively.
I Perceived usefulness
• Question – How useful do you think MuTAT would be in different subject areas? This question was asked in order to find out if the teachers thought that the principles applied in the design are applicable to different subjects. The responses are shown in a stacked bar chart in Figure 7.8.
Fig. 7.8 Usefulness of the MuTAT across subjects
Overall, the stacked bar chart indicates that the teachers thought the tool would be very useful for the major subjects. Mathematics was ranked highest (90%) followed by science (50%) and English (40%) respectively.
• Question - How useful do you think the tool would be in each key stage?
This question sought to determine if there was any class or age group the teachers consider the tool to be most beneficial to. Figure 7.9 illustrates the breakdown of the responses given.
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Fig. 7.9 Usefulness at various levels
Key stage2 (ages 7-11) had the highest rating with 9/10(90%) of the teachers agreeing that the application will be very useful or at least a little helpful. Generally, the respondents appear not to consider the application as useful during the early years and the later years.
• Question - What would you use the tool as?
This question was to determine if the respondents viewed the tool as a formative or summative assessment tool. From Figure 7.10 it can be seen all those that responded (9/10) considered the MuTAT to be useful as a diagnostic and final assessment tool.
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The results presented above in this part suggests that the teachers consider the tool to be useful, especially for the Keystage2 class and the major subject areas. Furthermore it can serve both as a diagnostic and final assessment tool.
II Participants’ attitudes and level of excitement
• Question – Have you seen or used a tool like this before?
This question was ask to find out if the participants had used similar tools and are familiar with the operations and design. Only two participants responded, one to the affirmative and the other negatively. The low response rate may be because the MuTAT is new and respondents could not easily place it alongside previous tools they had used.
• Question – How excited are you about the tool? The responses are illustrated in Figure 7.11.
Fig. 7.11 Excitement about MuTAT
From the figure, it can be seen that only one of the respondents was not excited about it. Half (5/10) of the teachers were very excited about the application, However a third (3/10) were undecided.
• Question – Would you like to have the app in your school?
This question examined the willingness of the respondents to use the tool in their classrooms. Figure 7.12 presents the responses.
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Fig. 7.12 Use of app in schools
The chart shows that the majority 8/10 (80%) of the respondents would like to use it in their classrooms. This positive response suggests that they were comfortable with adopting the tool for regular use in their classes.
• Question - How would you like to see the app delivered?
This question was to determine if there was a preferred technology platform for the delivery of the contents of the application. Figure 7.13 shows the chart of the responses.
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Most of the respondents favoured the iPad as the preferred platform for content delivery. This was closely followed by Android and the Education City proprietary solution respectively.
Overall, the results indicate that the teachers consider the tool to be usable and were willing to try it in their classes. The general attitude was positive and level of excitement modest.
III Participants’ comments and opinions
In this part, the participants were asked to freely comment about tool. The responses are presented in Table 7.6
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Table 7.6 Comments by teachers
Participant Comments
1 The idea seems very good as solving word problems is something even ks1 children have to do. Just needs to look better and be easier to add the numbers as most times I needed to use two hands to get the operations box up, and try a couple of times. Unsure about cost but would imagine for most schools the cost would need to be as little as possible. Most Ks1 children would probably not benefit from this as they are encouraged to use physical equipment. 2 It’s very handy I would want it to scribble over the top with an interactive pen to annotate,
mainly as a teacher
3 It looks great from the outset and would quickly win teachers over. Appears it would save lots of time spent marking and analysing cohorts.
4 This feedback was from a secondary and a primary teacher. They loved the action of pulling numbers out. And also touching 2 numbers and choosing a operation. Would like to be able to touch an answer in its box and a floating number to then add, take away etc. that seemed a little more natural/intuitive Would like to not have a constant internet connection to use it. 5 Flow diagram confusing - better in lines eg 34 +4
Like visual pictures for younger year eg pulling down pictures of 6 sweets with the number underneath.
Sentence building. Like it
6 Nil
7 Fab- practical and very good for visual learners to be able to manipulate the numbers and functions themselves in different ways and see the links between multi step problems as they work and see how one step in a problem can be incorrect ant then affect the overall outcome 8 Nil
9 Comment bank for feedback which is personalised
10 When you’ve clicked 2 numbers and entered an operation, you might like to swap the numbers around.
Would be useful if you could mark them as they went along (as a teacher).
Auto marking including ’you have used the wrong operation’ and ’you have added these up incorrectly’, here is the right answer.
Pulling down numbers is great. would be really good to demo on a whiteboard. Not enough content to warrant a price cost.
Can write questions yourself on a board and pull it down yourself using the whiteboard software.
Need a lot more content already loaded.