Direct Manipulation Tablet Apps for Education: How Should We Understand Them? Exploratory Phase of a Research Program

As the iPad and its competitors create a new product category – apps for mobile, multimedia tablets with touch and gesture interfaces – many are convinced that tablet apps will revolutionize education. For example, hand-controlled, direct manipulation features offer new ways to convey both spatial and abstract concepts, and progressive storylines can adapt to users in real-time. While the effectiveness of tablet apps for learning may seem obvious to new users, how and why particular apps might be effective is new research territory, and the relevance of existing learning theory is unknown. We describe a research program that will explore and analyze the design of existing educational apps, as well as the content of user and reviewer feedback, to develop propositions about design elements that make educational tablet apps effective.. Our research in progress will include experimental testing of hypotheses about principles of effectiveness and ongoing evaluation of the adequacy of existing theory.