Usefulness of Mobile Assisted Language Learning in Primary Education

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 mixed-method 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.

@article{Ishaq2020,
  title     = {Usefulness of Mobile Assisted Language Learning in Primary Education},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {11},
  number    = {1},
  year      = {2020},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Kashif Ishaq and Nor Azan Mat Zin and Fadhilah Rosdi and Adnan Abid and Qasim Ali},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2020.0110148},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2020.0110148}
}