EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN MAURITIUS

The use of IWB (Interactive whiteboard) as a pedagogical tool is recent in Mauritius. While various studies emphasize on the impact of IWB in classrooms, this study focuses on the perception of teachers and examines the actual usage and efficiency of IWB in Mauritian primary classrooms. The aim of this paper therefore is to evaluate both the teachers’ perception and the use of IWB in teaching and learning. Observation and semi-structured interview schedules were developed based on a techno-pedagogical model proposed by Udhin et al. (2013). The data collection tools consisted of questions about teacher-pupil communication, teacher-resource planning, pupil-resource interaction. Twelve teachers, who actively used IWB in their classrooms were selected as participants teaching in schools with different levels of learners.

The findings show that teachers believe that IWB can be used to support teaching of different subjects.

Results also reveal the following:
(1) the use IWB supports classroom teaching and learning
(2) it enhances learner’s engagement and learning and helps in catering for the different learning styles of learners
(3) using IWB can be a powerful pedagogical tool to enable teachers to gather feedback on learners
(4) use of IWB can help in developing a community of practitioners.

Moreover, there is a consensus on the contribution of this tool to three aspects of educational practice:
(1) the presentation of information and resources,
(2) the power of visualization in the interpretation of concepts and models,
(3) the facilitation of interaction and organisation of activities with a whole class focus.

The experience of this research further enables to feed back to theory, mainly with respect to communication within the digital classroom.