Developing a Tool for Evaluating Mobile Apps' Pedagogical Affordances: A Design-Based Research Approach

• In Event: 31.063 - The Design of Teacher Tools, Evaluative Tools, and Learning Environments That Promote Motivation and Design Thinking

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to establish a tool for evaluating educational mobile apps with preservice teachers that will help to judge the educational value of mobile applications, provide a baseline for the teacher education curriculum, and provide ideas for new mobile applications that could potentially help produce usable applications. Following the design based research (DBR) methodology, we conducted usability tests to observe 10 preservice teachers’ (four male, and six female) interactions with the educational mobile apps. The analysis of the video recordings of the usability sessions and the debriefing interviews helped to create evaluation categories highlighting critical criteria for mobile app assessment: contextual, pedagogy, content, technical usability, and connectivity.

Authors

• Evrim Baran, Middle East Technical University

• Tugba Altan, Middle East Technical University

• Erdem Uygun, Middle East Technical University