Digital technologies are increasingly being used to support school learning, but few studies have assessed the effectiveness of these new teaching methods for very young students. The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of implementing a digital notebook application designed for a stylus-oriented tablet in kindergarten classrooms. This digital notebook was dedicated to the acquisition of handwriting skills by beginning writers. Using artificial intelligence to finely analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of handwriting (i.e., shape, order and direction of the segments), the exercises were personalized, and extrinsic feedback was delivered at the end of each trial to inform learners of their results. A total of 22 kindergarten classes participated in a 12-week teacher-implemented program, half working exclusively with paper and pencil, and half partially undertaking their handwriting training with the digital notebook. A paper-and-pen writing task was administered as a pre-test and post-test to assess the progress of all the children. Data analysis showed that learning outcomes with the digital notebook were contingent upon the students' initial handwriting level, as the benefits of training with the app were only demonstrated for children with a medium level at the start of the study. The results are discussed in the light of the literature on the impact of extrinsic feedback and learners' initial levels.

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Numerous studies have examined the effects of gender diversity in groups on creative performance, and no clear effect has been identified. Findings depend on situational cues making gender diversity more or less salient in groups. A large-scale study on two cohorts (N = 2,261) was conducted among business students to examine the impact of the gender diversity in small groups on divergent thinking in an idea-generation task performed by synchronous electronic brainstorming. Participants were automatically randomized in three- or four-member groups to generate ideas during 10 min on a gendered or neutral task. Then, five categories of groups where the proportion of men/women in groups varied from three/four men to three/four women were compared to examine creative performance on three divergent thinking measures (fluency, flexibility, and originality). A Multivariate Generalized Linear Mixed Model (mGLMM) showed greater fluency in all-women groups than in other groups (except mixed-gender groups composed of two men and two women), and more specifically “solo” groups composed of a single woman/man among a majority of men/women. For flexibility and originality, the superiority of all-women groups was found only in comparison to “solo” groups composed of a single woman. As gender differences are more salient in “solo” groups than in other groups faultlines may appear in groups, leading to a deleterious impact on creative performance.