Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1.
Screen shots of a scene in 'Trees of Tales'
4
Experiment Design
This study evaluated 'Trees of Tales' (TT) as an enjoyable reading experience in
comparison to two other reading interventions; non-interactive application (EB), and
printed storybooks (PB). For the non-interactive application, we chose an iPad app
named 'Arabic Stories' that we had found in the App store and that contained five
Arabic stories. The printed topics were 40 storybooks selected from the school library
with the help of the librarian and children chose 3 to 4 of the topics to read. Previous
studies of children experiences with educational software found that both 'observed'
and 'reported' fun are informative in user studies (Read, MacFarlane, & Casey,
2002). In this paper, we concentrated on the 'reported' fun, usability, and preference
for reading.
An experiment of within-subjects counter-balanced design with the three
interventions: TT, EB, and PB was performed. The sample comprised 18 children (9
boys, 9 girls) aged between 9 years and 10 years. The children were randomly
selected from fourth grade of a public primary school in Muscat, Oman. To determine
the order in which children used the three interventions, a counter-balanced design
was applied (Foley, 2004). This approach required the division of the sample into six
groups that read from the three interventions in different order.
The experiment was carried out over three weeks. One reading session was
performed every week during the school's 25-minute break and in the library room.
On the second and third weeks, the same children were allocated to a different reading
intervention. Over the course of the three weeks, every child used each of the three
interventions once.
4.1
Data Collection
The primary means of data collection was the 'fun sorter', which is part of the 'fun
toolkit'
[18].
The 'Fun Toolkit' is a data collection tool that assesses the opinions of
children and their reaction to software, applications or games [20]. The 'fun sorter'
required the children to rank the three reading interventions in order of preference on
three separate criteria: (a) fun, (b) ease of use, and (c) how interesting the content
was. The method provided each child with a form containing three spaces for each
question and 'stickers' depicting the interventions. The pictures on the stickers were
explained to them. The children were then asked to rank the three interventions by
