Why This App? How Parents Choose a Good Educational App.

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Technology, Media & Child Development

Abstract

As reported by Apple in 2018, there were 200,000 educational apps in the App Store (Cnet, 2018). Interestingly, Over 80% of top selling educational apps are targeted at children (Shuler et al., 2012). Therefore, apps can be considered a dominant medium for providing educational content to children. Thus, it is critical to know how parents are choosing apps for their children and understand what indicates a quality educational app. To address this issue, an online study with parents (n = 180) was conducted and parents’ app selection behavior was investigated leveraging Uses and Gratifications theory. U&G suggests that people use the media to satisfy their psychological needs and to achieve their personal goals (Katz et al., 1973). The assumption underlying U&G is that parents select apps based on their anticipated gratifications or parental need fulfillment (Broekman et al., 2016; 2018). Thus, it is vital to identify parents’ most dominant needs while selecting apps for their children.
In the App store, apps are presented in the form of images and text descriptions, which can contain critical information that enable customers to make informed decisions about which apps to download (Vaala et al., 2015). In previous research, five educational benchmarks have been identified as indicators of app quality (Dubé et al., 2020); having a development team that involves educators, possessing a guiding curriculum (Vaala et al., 2015), being based on a learning theory (Kebritchi & Hirumi, 2008), containing scaffolded learning, and providing feedback (Callaghan & Reich, 2018; Cayton-Hodges et al., 2015). In this study, parents viewed 10 mock math apps that replicated the App Store presentation format. Five apps included educational benchmarks and five contained educational buzzwords (e.g., interactive). Immediately following each app, parents provided value judgements of the app by stating whether they would download the app or not, rating it on a 5-point-scale, stating how much they would be willing to pay, and explaining why they chose to download the app or not. Results indicated that parents value educational benchmarks over buzzwords (Table 1); they value apps that feature development team, scaffolding, and guiding curriculums more than those with central learning theories and feedback (Table 2). Development team had the highest download frequency and rating while learning theory had the lowest download frequency and rating. Parents were willing to pay more for the development team app and the least for ones containing feedback. Interestingly, the learning theory app was ranked the highest while the development team app received the lowest ranking from parents. Parents are often looking for content that can provide educational benefits to their children (Broekman et al., 2016). Therefore, valuing educational benchmarks over buzzwords suggests that parents are primarily seeking apps that meet their children’s educational needs, not only because they believe such features are important, but also because they feel that their children will benefit from them and will react in a positive way to such apps. Overall, parents’ app needs seem to align with some of the research on what makes a good educational app.

Authors

• Armaghan Montazami, McGill University
  Presenting Author

• Adam Kenneth Dubé, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Heather Ann Pearson, Centre universitaire de santé McGill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gulsah Kacmaz, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Run Wen, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sabrina Shajeen Alam, McGill University
  Non-Presenting Author