Browsing by Author "Vartiainen, Liisa"

Children’s later mathematical achievement can be predicted already in pre-school. It’s important to support low achieving children as early as possible so the differences wouldn’t grow larger. There is different kind of results of using computer-based games supporting low achieving children. Some research has shown that low achievers would benefit from computer-based gaming. The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to evaluate if computer-based gaming increase arithmetic skills of mathematically low achieving children aged 5–10 years. The thesis is a systematic literature review. All included studies were randomized and controlled intervention studies. The computer-based game interventions were made for 5–10 years old children who have lower skills in mathematics compared to the same age peers. To evaluate the effect of children’s arithmetic skills the effect sizes were calculated between control and experiment groups. The features of effective interventions were also analyzed. The results show that there was a positive effect to children’s arithmetical skills. To ensure the positive effect the game was played at least 30 min in week and the effect was better with younger children. Earlier meta-analyses have shown that it’s difficult to evaluate the effect of computer-based instruction because there is much of weakness in the intervention studies reporting and methodologies. That is also seen in this thesis. In future, it would be important to do reliable intervention studies to get more answers to the research question. The positive results in this bachelor thesis supports the value of schools’ investments in the use of technology.