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Using Digitally Enhanced Tangible Materials for Teaching Fractions: Results of a Project

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Abstract

Primary school students have trouble understanding concepts related to fractions. On the other hand, technology constantly provides interesting tools that stimulate students' interest and foster learning. Among these, tangible user interfaces allow users to interact with digital applications through the manipulation of everyday objects. Given that conventional tangible materials are already used in the teaching of fractions, the study at hand presents the results of a project in which their impact on learning was compared to that of materials digitally enhanced with the use of tangible user interfaces. The results indicated that the learning outcomes were better for the group of students who used the latter. Moreover, students' enjoyment was greater. However, there were no differences in terms of motivation, ease-of-use, and subjective learning effectiveness. The results can be attributed to both the characteristics of tangible user interfaces and the teaching framework that was followed. Nevertheless, the educational potential of tangible user interfaces has to be further explored.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Primary Education, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece

    Emmanuel Fokides & Konstantinos Alatzas

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  1. Emmanuel Fokides
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  2. Konstantinos Alatzas
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All authors contributed equally to this work. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Emmanuel Fokides.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Links for the Scratch mini-applications developed for the project.

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/437103568/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/438278289/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/439359336/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/441323099/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/446890108/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/452511332/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/444154099/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/444663859/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/445707633/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/449728740/

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/449728740/

Appendix 2

Example questions in the evaluation tests.

figure a
figure b

Appendix 3

The questionnaire's items.

Factor

Item

Enjoyment

It was fun to use this tool*

I felt bored while using this tool**

I enjoyed using this tool

I really enjoyed studying with this tool

I felt frustrated**

Subjective usefulness

I felt that this tool fostered my learning

This tool was a much easier way to learn compared with the usual teaching

This tool made my learning more interesting

I felt that this tool helped me to increase my knowledge

I felt that I caught the basics of what I was taught with this tool

Ease of use

I think it was easy to learn how to use this tool

I found this tool unnecessarily complex**

I think that most people will learn to use this tool very quickly

I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this tool**

I felt that I needed help from someone else in order to use this tool because It was not easy for me to understand how to use it**

It was easy for me to become skillful at using this tool

Motivation

This tool did not hold my attention**

When using this tool, I did not have the impulse to learn more about the learning subject**

The tool did not motivate me to learn**

  1. * = the word "tool" was replaced by "conventional tangible material" and "digital tangible material", depending on the tool students used; ** = item for which its scoring was reversed; all items were presented in a five-point Likert type scale.

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Fokides, E., Alatzas, K. Using Digitally Enhanced Tangible Materials for Teaching Fractions: Results of a Project. Tech Know Learn 28, 1589–1613 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-022-09605-x

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