Usefulness of Mobile Assisted Language Learning in Primary Education

Abstract

Literacy & Numeracy Drive (LND) is a mobile application that is used in public sector primary schools in Punjab province, Pakistan to teach students of Grade 03 on a tablet for learning languages and Mathematics. Persons designated the role of a Monitoring & Evaluation Assistant (MEA) visit every school allocated by authorities once in a month and select 07-10 students randomly to evaluate them on his own tablet by asking multiple questions related to English, Urdu and Mathematics. After the evaluation, MEA has to upload the result on the official portal for the respective school. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of LND for its usefulness, usability, accessibility, content, and assessments by involving students and teachers using this application in different schools. A mixedmethod study has been adopted in which 57 teachers and nearly 300 students from different locations of the district and from different schools have been selected, to measure the effectiveness of LND and evaluate the effectiveness with the help of interviews and questionnaires. The result reveals, in its current form, the LND application is not effective and needs improvement in usability, design, content, accessibility, infrastructure, and assessment. Furthermore, teachers recommend that game-based learning consists of an interactive interface, phonics, animations. As the more interactive and attractive presentation of the content and variations in the assessment may increase students' involvement and will make this application more effective and will produce good results.

Mobile-assisted and gamification-based language learning: a systematic literature review

“…, writing, reading, listening and speaking (Chang et al, 2013), listening comprehension (Çakmak & Erçetin, 2017), grammar (Chu, Wang & Wang, 2019) and reading comprehension (Ishaq et al, 2020b). The results presented by studies for the applications of pedagogy, reading, pronunciation, writing, listening, speaking, grammar outperformed the control group.…”

“…The results presented by studies for the applications of pedagogy, reading, pronunciation, writing, listening, speaking, grammar outperformed the control group. It may be concluded that mobile applications for vocabulary learning have a positive impact on language learning in which pupils from the experimental group outperformed the control group except (Klimova & Polakova, 2020) (Ishaq et al, 2020b) where the students and teachers mentioned they are not satisfied with the design, content, assessment methods adopted in the applications besides pronunciation support and teachers' notifications were also missing. Gamified applications are proposed for vocabulary learning (Sandberg, Maris & Geus, 2011) (Sandberg, Maris & Hoogendoorn, 2014) (Wu, 2018) (Chen, Liu & Huang, 2019) (Fisser, Voogt & Bom, 2012), Spanish language learning (Holden & Sykes, 2011), Idioms (Amer, 2014), Vocabulary, Grammar, and Sentence Structure (Tsai et al, 2016), and Tenses, Words, Sentences (Önal, Çevik & Şenol, 2019).…”

“…Simultaneously, the affordance framework consisted of pedagogical, social, and technological components, used to examine the ICT tools affordance for language learning ( Ramadoss & Wang, 2012 ). TAM was used in the study to measure perceived usefulness and ease of use ( Ishaq et al, 2020b ).…”

“…Summarize the Table 11 , researchers developed applications and games for language learning in which majority of these developed for English Language Learning and vocabulary. Similarly, less application and games were developed for pedagogy ( Kearney et al, 2012 ) ( Dennen & Hao, 2014 ) reading ( Hsu, Hwang & Chang, 2013 ) ( Lin, 2014 ), pronunciation ( Liakin, Cardoso & Liakina, 2014 ) idioms ( Wong, 2013 ) ( Amer, 2014 ) tenses ( Önal, Çevik & Şenol, 2019 ) grammar ( Chu, Wang & Wang, 2019 ; Ramadoss & Wang, 2012 ) spellings ( Tshering et al, 2018 ) achievement, attitude, usefulness, usability and effectiveness ( Martin & Ertzberger, 2013 ) ( Liu, Li & Carlsson, 2010 ) ( Ishaq et al, 2020a ; Ishaq et al, 2020b ; Ishaq et al, 2019 ; Ishaq et al, 2020d ). From the selected studies, various models/frameworks were used as a base for developing an application in which TAM ( Hsu, Hwang & Chang, 2013 ) ( Lin, 2014 ) ( Chang et al, 2013 ) ( Ishaq et al, 2020b ; Ishaq et al, 2019 ) mostly used.…”

“…)(Lin, 2014) (Chang et al, 2013) (Ishaq et al, 2020b;Ishaq et al, 2019) mostly used. Many applications did not use any model or Framework as the base for the purpose.…”