TaBooGa: A Hybrid Learning App to Support Children's Reading Motivation

ABSTRACT

In this paper we present TaBooGa (Tangible Book Game), a hybrid learning application we developed to increase children's reading motivation. As children are exposed to digital devices early on (e.g., smart phones and tablets) weak readers are particularly apt to prefer digital offers over reading traditional books. Prior work has shown that ebooks can partially address this challenge by making reading more compelling for children. In this work we show that augmenting ebooks with tangible elements can further increase the reading motivation. In particular, we embed tangible elements that allow for navigating through the book as well as in the form of mini-games that interlace the reading task. We report on the results of an evaluation among 22 primary school pupils, comparing the influence of the approach on both strong and weak readers. Our results show a positive influence beyond reading motivation on both weak and strong readers. Yet, the approach requires to strive a balance between the tangible elements being motivating while at the same time not being too distracting.

References

1. Alissa N. Antle, Jillian L. Warren, Emily S. Cramer, Min Fan, and Brendan B. Matkin. 2016. Designing Tangibles for Children: One Day Hands-on Workshop. In Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '16). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 726--730.
2. Richard Bamberger. 2000. Erfolgreiche Leseerziehung in Theorie und Praxis. Schneider Hohengehren, Wien.
3. Lizzy Bleumers, Karen Mouws, Jonathan Huyghe, Maarten Van Mechelen, Ilse Mariën, and Bieke Zaman. 2015. Sensitivity to Parental Play Beliefs and Mediation in Young Children's Hybrid Play Activities. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '15). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 170--177.
4. buchreport.de. 2015. Cornelsen-Studie zur Medienausstattung an Schulen. https://www.buchreport.de/2015/05/26/cornelsen-studie-zur-medienausstattung-an-schulen/. (2015). (last accessed 24.4.2017).
5. Christina Clark and Kate Rumbold. 2006. Reading for Pleasure: A research Overview. Technical Report.
6. Luca Colombo and Monica Landoni. 2011. Towards an Engaging e-Reading Experience. In Proceedings of the 4th ACM Workshop on Online Books, Complementary Social Media and Crowdsourcing (BooksOnline '11). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 61--66.
7. Luca Colombo, Monica Landoni, and Elisa Rubegni. 2014. Design Guidelines for More Engaging Electronic Books: Insights from a Cooperative Inquiry Study. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '14). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 281--284.
8. Simone Ehmig and Bettina Müller. 2012. Vorlesestudie 2012: Digitale Angebote - neue Reize für das Vorlesen?: Repräsentative Befragung von Eltern und Kindern im Alter von 2 bis 8 Jahren. Technical Report.
9. Min Fan, Alissa N. Antle, and Emily S. Cramer. 2016. Design Rationale: Opportunities and Recommendations for Tangible Reading Systems for Children. In Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '16). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 101--112.
10. Min Fan, Alissa N. Antle, Maureen Hoskyn, Carman Neustaedter, and Emily S. Cramer. 2017. Why Tangibility Matters: A Design Case Study of At-Risk Children Learning to Read and Spell. In Proceedings of the 2017 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'17). ACM, NY, NY, USA.
11. Sabine Feierabend, Theresa Plankenhorn, and Thomas Rathgeb. 2014. KIM-Studie 2014, Kind + Medien + Computer + Internet, Basisuntersuchung zum Medienumgang 6- bis 13-Jähriger in Deutschland. Technical Report 10. Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest.
12. George W. Fitzmaurice and William Buxton. 1997. An Empirical Evaluation of Graspable User Interfaces: Towards Specialized, Space-multiplexed Input. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '97). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 43--50.
13. Dagmar Holzmann-Witschas and Magdalena Güttler. 2012. Geschlechtersensible Leseförderung in einem offenen Literaturunterricht. (2012). unpublished manuscript.
14. Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer. 1997. Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces Between People, Bits and Atoms. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '97). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 234--241.
15. Janio Jadan-Guerrero, Javier Jaen, María A. Carpio, and Luis A. Guerrero. 2015. Kiteracy: A Kit of Tangible Objects to Strengthen Literacy Skills in Children with Down Syndrome. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '15). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 315--318.
16. Tina Kothe, Anja Mohr, and Ida Buchwald. 2014. Art Education in the Digital World. A Picture Book as App.. In IBOOC2014 - 2nd Workshop on Interactive eBooks for Children (IDC '14). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 281--284. http://idc2014-ebooks.fbk.eu/sites/idc2014-ebooks.fbk.eu
17. Alexis R. Lauricella, Rachel Barr, and Sandra L. Calvert. 2014. Parent-child interactions during traditional and computer storybook reading for children's comprehension: Implications for electronic storybook design. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 2, 1 (2014), 17 -- 25.
18. Aurélien Lucchi, Patrick Jermann, Guillaume Zufferey, and Pierre Dillenbourg. 2010. An Empirical Evaluation of Touch and Tangible Interfaces for Tabletop Displays. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI '10). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 177--184.
19. Nadia Mana, Ornella Mich, Antonella De Angeli, and Allison Druin. 2013. Interactive e-Books for Children. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '13). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 593--595.
20. Paul Marshall. 2007. Do Tangible Interfaces Enhance Learning?. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI '07). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 163--170.
21. Amelia K. Moody. 2010. Using Electronic Books in the Classroom to Enhance Emergent Literacy Skills in Young Children. Journal of Literacy and Technology 11 (November 2010), 23--52.
22. Jule Ostrop. 2010. Literarisches Lernen mit dem Grüffelo. Praxis Grundschule 2010, 6 (2010), 9 -- 12.
23. Ana Lúcia Pinto. 2014. Touch, read and play: enhancing the reading experience of hybrid-enhanced children's picturebooks. In Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Interaction design and children (IDC'14). ACM, NY, NY, USA.
24. Jenny S. Radezky, Jayna Schuhmacher, and Barry Zuckerman. 2015. Mobile and Interactive Media Use by Young Children: the Good, the Bad and the Unknown. Pediatrics 135, 1 (2015).
25. Elisa Rubegni and Monica Landoni. 2014. Fiabot!: Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Storytelling Application for Schools. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '14). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 165--174.
26. Susanne Seitinger, Elisabeth Sylvan, Oren Zuckerman, Marko Popovic, and Orit Zuckerman. 2006. A New Playground Experience: Going Digital?. In CHI'06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA'06). ACM, NY, NY, USA, 303--308.
27. Kaspar H. Spinner. 2006. Literarisches Lernen. Praxis Deutsch 2006, 200 (2006), 6 -- 16.

Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Education

• Social and professional topics

  • Professional topics

    • Computing education