Abstract
The research work reported in this article is part of a wider study aimed at developing a mobile application (app) for Science Education in primary school. For that, we designed a participatory framework proposal nested within the larger framework of Educational Design Research. This framework emerged from the authors’ need to organise the different phases of the mobile apps development and to arrange the expected products that arise from them. Our framework suggests a grounded, participatory and user-centred approach, relating literature contributions with data collected among future end-users. In this study, we exemplify the implementation of the proposed framework by presenting the outcomes of a specific moment of the preliminary research: students’ stories and drawing analysis, to define the mobile app concept. For that, we (1) present and describe the participatory framework proposal, (2) identify and characterise the research method adopted to define the mobile app concept, (3) reveal and analyse data collected from the implementation of a creative writing and drawing activity performed by fourth grade primary-school students, and (4) describe the implications of data analysis in the mobile app concept definition. Our intention is to share with other educational researchers an approach that can be used to develop educational mobile apps grounded on future end-users’ perceptions and ideas. We also aim to contribute to deepen the Educational Design Research apps by proposing and exemplifying the implementation of a framework that brings together researchers, students, teachers and experts.
Highlights
Educational software development is highly complex, as it comprises didactic, graphical, functional and technical specifications developed according to different interactive and iterative stages
Content analysis was performed to deduce and validate the following information related to the mobile app concept and to its digital educational contents: 1. the possible approaches to the Human Body topic; 2. the subtopics to focus on the digital educational contents; 3. the main characters; 4. the possible graphic environments
We intended to share with other educational researchers an approach that can be used to support the development of educational mobile apps grounded on future end-users’ perceptions, ideas and needs
Summary
Educational software development is highly complex, as it comprises didactic, graphical, functional and technical specifications developed according to different interactive and iterative stages. Its complexity has resulted in several development approaches, some based on software development methods, others based on educational design methods (usually referred to as Instructional Design – Cf. Seel et al 2017) and some based on both (Allen 2007; Brown and Green 2016; Sommerville 2011).
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