Learning Problem
English knowledge and typing ability are essential skills that require significant time and practice especially for non-native speakers
Learning Goal
Develop software to teach 7 year olds English phonics, vocabulary and typing
Learning Theory & Rationale
Behaviorist (Drill and Kill)
The Audio-Lingual Method (ALM): drilling, repetition, and habit-formation central elements of instruction
Multimodality
In order to reduce cognitive load, it is best to couple information into auditory and visual components, thus maximizing working memory
Motivation
The Affective Filter Hypothesis (Krashen, 1984) “The effective language teacher is someone who can provide input and help make it comprehensible in a low anxiety situation.”
Scaffolding
One of the most important roles that instruction can play is to refine and extend the naturally occurring process whereby new schemas are first constructed out of old ones, then gradually differentiated and integrated (Glaser, 1984)
Cognitive Modeling
Use explicit instructional talk and animation to reveal thought processes
Communicative Language Teaching
Emphasizing real-life situations and communications in context - type and pronounce your own name, compose your own message, learn how to say them in order to communicate with others and the world (Littlewood, 1981)
Systematic Phonics
Lower-level, bottom-up decoding and reading skills are there, beginning ESL learners can then proceed to work on word-and-sentence meaning
Assessment
User acceptance
In-class usage observations (x2)
Student, Parent, and Teacher interviews
Questions
Did you use it? What did you like/dislike? Compare the development of users and non-users, etc
Content
Student worksheets (x2)
Vocabulary recall
Phonetic awareness
Transfer
Accuracy and speed
Proxy for content and typing technique awareness
Longitudinal surveys (0-9 weeks)
student self-reported scores
parent/teacher analysis