Effectiveness of Digital Technology on Engagement for enhancing English language skills among Primary School Students

Abstract

Primary Education is always considered very essential for any society because it guarantees learners’ cognitive, effective, social, psycho-motor developments as well as their readiness not only for elementary but for the higher levels of education. The prevailing retention rate of school going students is estimated 25 million aged 5-16. Despite the fact that popularity of digital content and video games has transcended entertainment crossing into world’s education, yet there is a lack of systematic study of this emerging technology efficacy which creates a huge gap in it especially in backward areas of Pakistan. Students in Pakistan are mostly unaware of 21st century skills thus; technology literacy is one of the contributing factors towards it. Therefore, in order to overcome the lack of usage of technology and disengagement in learning, a technology-assistant learning strategy will be employed in this study. The use of technology in the classroom helps to prepare students for the digital future. This 21st century skill is essential in order to be successful in this day and age. The use of technology makes the learning more interesting and fun, especially by using laptops and tablets. The impact that technology has had on today’s schools has been quite significant. This widespread adoption of technology has completely changed how teachers teach and students learn. As there is a pandemic situation in the whole world and education has shifted to online and the practice of digital technology is used for teaching and learning increases, But in Pakistan and underdeveloped countries children are less used to digital technology for learning. That’s why they are facing difficulties in learning and compromising the quality of education. There is also a purposed solution of using innovative technology in schools on urgent basis to achieve better outcomes in short period and use of computer and other technology is an obvious solution to maximize the result and it would be helpful to minimize the dropout rate of students. The aim of this research is to study the effect of technology on the engagement level (effective, behavioral and cognitive) of students to learn English in Kindergarten classrooms. This will enhance the skills of students (reading, writing and comprehension). Students will be provided with digital devices as Mobile phones laptops etc. The intervention is based on experimental approach comprising of one control group and one experimental group. 3-4 English learning games, applications or videos will be installed on these devices provided to the stu dents of experimental group to check whether the field experiment compares weather technology-assisted learning helpful or not. The other group will learn English by traditional methods. At the start of intervention, experimental group will be trained to operate the devices and then they will use the devices by themselves. A digital application named as Classdojo used for engagement. Pretest and post-test will be taken from the students in the start and at the end of the intervention. To measure the levels of engagement, results from both of the group will be compared and analyzed after intervention.