Adaptive Digital Media and Parent Communication Tools as Methods for Enhancing Young Children's Learning

• In Event: Learning From Educational Media at Home: Principles and Practices for Working With Families

Abstract

Objectives
In this presentation, we examine how an ecosystem of connected digital apps for young children and their parents can help provide a framework for understanding learning outside of formal environments. We will also explore how adaptive and game-based apps can improve engagement and support learning.

Perspective
By developing adaptive digital games for children, we believe we can improve the child’s experience. We can use the child’s responses within these apps to estimate his or her ability on a number of learning measures and use these data to a) adjust the difficulty level of all related games in our adaptive-learning network and b) provide parents information through a separate app about their child’s performance in those learning areas, as well as tips for supporting this learning with offline experiences. For example, if a three-year-old is engaged in a digital game in which she is consistently identifying basic shapes correctly (e.g., circles and triangles), an adaptive game can move to delivering prompts about more complex shapes (e.g., hexagons and octagons). Parents can be notified via their own app that their child has displayed developing knowledge of basic shapes, and can be offered suggestions to point out the ways in which these shapes vary in the environment (e.g., that triangles can be irregular), or to engage their child with an activity that introduces more advanced shapes through a matching game.

Methods
We have built an ecosystem around digital media with a number of learner-directed and adaptive games available to families through the iTunes app store. We have used the data collected from these apps to estimate the learner’s ability on a variety of learning measures. The games themselves adapt according to these estimates, and these estimates are used to deliver information to parents about their child’s engagement and ability along learning dimensions, as well as suggestions for supporting this development offline. We have data from the child-directed apps in the form of usage data and responses to specific prompts. We have also done a series of qualitative and quantitative surveys and interviews with parents around their experiences with the parent-focused app.

Results
We have found through a randomized field trial that providing adaptive learning games to young children can significantly improve both their engagement and their learning. Parents have provided feedback that this adaptivity is advantageous to their children. In addition, parents appreciate having a personalized parent-facing app.

Significance
Adaptive, game-based learning has been posited to improve engagement and learning, and we believe that apps incorporating these features are an important addition to young children’s digital media landscape. Providing parents with context and real-world experiences based on their child’s performance is an important piece in extending this learning beyond the digital domain. As an educational media company, our organization has the opportunity to both enrich the digital landscape for young learners and reach parents with personalized information about learning and development.

Authors

• Dylan Andrew Arena, Stanford University

• Julie Watson, Kidaptive