Abstract:

As of 2017, an estimated 750,000 apps were available in the domain of education. Consequently, teachers have a monumental task in evaluating and selecting effective educational apps to be used in their classrooms. A number of studies have proposed, discussed and examined frameworks or classification schemes for evaluating mobile apps, but, to date, no studies have developed and tested a scale for evaluating the quality of educational mobile apps. The purpose of the current study was to develop a scale to evaluate the design (n=4 items), engagement (n=4 items) and learning value (n=5 items) of educational mobile apps. The scale was tested with 722 grade 7 to 10 students (female = 339, male = 382), 33 teachers (female=25, male=8), and 32 unique mobile apps focusing on mathematics and science. The analysis revealed that the Mobile App Evaluation Scale (MAES) demonstrated good internal reliability for each of the three constructs, convergent validity, construct validity, and predictive validity.

Keywords:

Mobile apps, scale, evaluation, secondary school, mathematics, science, STEM.