Abstract:

All over the world, huge investments are being made in various technologies for learning in schools. As a consequence, educational leaders and educators are seeking out how to best implement these technologies to support classroom practice with the intention to improve the effectiveness of teaching and increase learning. It is thus important to know how such an implementation can be carried out if we want the technologies to be adopted and used successfully. This study explores two different methodologies for implementing an adaptive learning game in the English as a second language (ESL) classroom in primary school in Sweden.

The study is based on observations of two different implementation processes (A and B) of an adaptive learning game in schools in Sweden. In total, 13 schools and 619 students participated. In process A, there were seven schools and 430 students. In process B, there were six schools and 189 students. We focus on finding premises that affect the implementation process. Also, to investigate which methodology resulted in the highest number of active users of the learning game. We use log data generated by the learning game which shows the number of active users. The data for this study has been collected within a larger project developing personalised learning technologies (iread-project.eu).

As a result of the analysis, the following four premises were found to affect the implementation process: recruitment, time frame, responsibility and scheduling. Those four premises were different for process A and process B. The methodology for the premises was the same for all the participants in process A and a different methodology was used for all the participants in process B. When studying the number of active users in process A and B, we can see that the two different methodologies generated different results. Process A generated 238 students (n=430) who were active users, whereas process B generated 154 students (n=189) who were active users. This means that process A resulted in 55% of active users compared to 81% in process B. Our study shows that the methodology used when implementing a technology in school has a great impact on the actual usage in the classroom.

Keywords:

Methodologies, implementation, technologies, learning games, classroom practice.