Should I Follow You, Dora? Understanding the Relative Success of Interactive Educational Television Show Prompts

• In Event: Using Digital Media for Learning: From Dora to Facebook to Games and Beyond

Abstract

I studied how often children interact with television shows designed to stimulate reactions to on-screen prompts for action. Using data drawn from a 1-year naturalistic, ethnographic study of children watching and interacting with digital media in their homes, I explored the situations in which children respond to television prompts, the kinds of prompts they respond to, and the frequency with which they respond. I present here a novel coding system and data visualization model for understanding how “interactive” television shows prompt children to interact; this model illustrates why rapid successions of prompts (“prompt chains”) may not be ideally suited to engendering interactive behavior among children, and how certain types of prompts are more effective at motivating interactive behavior.

Author

• Therese E. Dugan, PURE Research and Consulting