부산대학교 도서관

It has been identified that not all students learn effectively during class lessons. Different learning styles call for different approaches but limitations in a classroom setting restricts efficient in‐class teaching and learning. It has also been observed that individual attention given to struggling students does influence and increase learning activities and interest in a subject, hence the existence of teaching assistants (TAs). The question addressed in this paper is ‘would a computer‐ based intervention give the same effect as an individual tuition but without the need for human resource?’ An example of such software is Nessy™, a learning system that has won awards for its digital teaching approach. However, some groups benefit more from kinaesthetic teaching so this aspect should be taken into consideration when choosing a teaching strategy. This paper will investigate the effects of using Nessy™ on its own, Nessy™ with individual support, and individual tuition without the use of Nessy™. It also discusses the design and development of a digital kinaesthetic game to support struggling readers and study the effects of its use with and without individual support. So far, the study carried out has used Nessy™ with individual support as the intervention for 30 minutes a week over a 10 week period. For the initial study the researcher guided the participants when using the digital game. The data obtained from the pre and post tests showed greater improvement in reading for every participant when compared to students of the same class who were not given the intervention. The second study was a cross‐intervention between Nessy™ without individual support and the use of individual tuition without Nessy™. Two groups of participants went through each intervention for 6 weeks each for 30 minutes per week. The pre and post tests showed that both groups, after going through the personal tutoring, had a higher improvement in reading than when they had gone through the digital game intervention alone. To conclude, the computer‐based intervention under proper supervision does help struggling readers and has been shown to give better results compared to classroom lessons, individual tuition and unguided computer‐based intervention. The results of this study will become the design basis of the kinaesthetic game to be developed for the next study. If computer‐based intervention is proven to be beneficial, it is expected that a digital kinaesthetic game would improve learning even more in kinaesthetic learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]