Ready, Set, Jump
An Interactive eBook Designed to Awaken the Aspirations of Primary School
Students
Uwe Terton and Ruth Greenaway
Engage Research Lab, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Australia
Keywords: Aspirations, Awakening, Career Paths, Digital Literacy, eBook, Hyperlinks, Literacy, Low Socioeconomic
Backgrounds, Motivation, MyVoice, Photovoice, Storytelling.
Abstract: The Commonwealth government and the university sector have acknowledged the low participation rate of
students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds in post-school education and training. Various
strategies and approaches have been developed over time to increase the number of students from this group
participating in tertiary education, with varied success. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the
development of an educational electronic book (eBook) which is being used as a tool in the My Tertiary
Education Day (MyTED) program. The program encourages primary aged students to consider tertiary
education opportunities through the use of the eBook titled “Ready, Set, Jump”. By leveraging the positive
learning outcomes that can be achieved through the interaction with multimedia teaching content combined
with a compelling story and an appealing design, the MyTED eBook encourages students to think about
their aspirations. During the MyTED program the ways in which an eBook containing a story about
aspirations can encourage primary school students to aspire to participate in tertiary education is
investigated. The eBook encourages children to reflect critically on their aspirations, work individually and
collectively on interactive activities, critique a series of videos and develop an affinity towards digital
literacy.
1 INTRODUCTION
“What do you want to do when you grow up?” We
all remember this question but do we remember the
answer that we gave when we were between eight
and ten years old? The answer is very important as it
will inevitably inform our future and probably
reappear somewhere during our career pathway.
This concept is explored in a program we called My
Tertiary Education Day (MyTED) which has been
specifically designed for this age group. MyTED
encourages primary aged students to consider
tertiary education opportunities through the use of an
interactive electronic book (eBook). The students’
parents are also included in all aspects of the
program; they play a significant role in guiding and
informing the aspirations of their children. During
the MyTED program we investigated the ways in
which an eBook containing a story about aspirations
can encourage primary school students to aspire to
participate in tertiary education.
MyTED contains three phases of which the
second phase is designed to awaken the aspirations
of participants. Students are encouraged to wish and
dream about anything that they would like to happen
in their future. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a
career goal that is wished for; it can be a personal
goal or a sporting achievement for example. This
second phase we initially called the capacity
building phase but after further discussion we chose
to borrow the term awakening from the language of
Indigenous Australians to name this phase the
awakening aspirations phase. The eBook sits within
the awakening aspirations phase and because of its
interactive immersive nature it plays an important
role in encouraging students to consider tertiary
education options. By being designed to align with
the Australian Curriculum the eBook assists with the
development of language, literature and literacy
skills in Year 4 students.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature suggests that it is between eight and
ten years of age that those children begin to gain
185
Terton U. and Greenaway R..
Ready, Set, Jump - An Interactive eBook Designed to Awaken the Aspirations of Primary School Students.
DOI: 10.5220/0005405201850192
In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 185-192
ISBN: 978-989-758-107-6
Copyright
c
2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
insight into their own aspirations and capabilities.
These insights are guided by interactions with family
and members of the wider community (Lee 2012,
p.115). Bandura et al. (2001) claim that the choices
made by children during the formative periods of
development shape the course of their future lives.
Such choices determine which aspects of
potentialities people cultivate, and which they leave
undeveloped. Primary aged students should be
exposed to a myriad of options and possible
pathways they can take to cultivate their
potentialities. In an effort to inform, guide and
encourage students to reach their potential, programs
should be put in place to awaken the aspirations of
young people at an early age. According to Gale
&Tranter (2011) interventions to encourage students
to consider their aspirations aimed at younger
students in primary school are more effective than
ones aimed at traditional groups such as those in
Year 10 onwards. The literature indicates the prime
developmental time to begin discussions about
aspirations is between the ages of eight and ten years
of age.
Aspirations are a hope or ambition of achieving
something and are stimulated by exposing children
to different environments or facilitating activities
that enhance their cognitive development (Lee
2012). Devlin & McKay (2011) affirm that the
aspirations of students from low socio-economic
status (LSES) backgrounds are often lower than
those of traditional students (Devlin and McKay
2011 p.3). They also state that they can lack
confidence and self-esteem affecting their overall
sense of ‘belonging’ in higher education and their
choices about seeking support (David et al. 2010;
Murphy 2009; Christie et al. 2008; Charlesworth
2004).
In addressing the issues identified in the
literature it can be assumed that aspirations,
confidence, self esteem and self efficacy in children
aged 8 to 10 years who are in their formative period
need to be stimulated and supported. Therefore, with
this in mind, it was decided to focus the MyTED
project on areas and schools with a higher
proportion of students that come from low
socioeconomic backgrounds. However, rather than
developing a program that focuses entirely on those
particular students we decided to create an integrated
curriculum. An integrated curriculum provides the
opportunity for all students to bring to the learning
environment varying resources in the cognitive,
linguistic, knowledge and cultural domains. They
then need to be guided to “develop the critical and
communicative skills and conceptual repertoires that
will enable them to deal with academic tasks”
(Warren 2002 p. 87). Developing a program that
fosters ambitions for all children is strongly
supported by Sommerville (2013) who states “it is
the right of every child to receive an education that
promotes their individual learning path”. This
inclusive practice emphasises the uniqueness of each
child’s experience, potentialities, aspirations,
learning and development.
The current literature and outcomes of recent
studies indicate that targeted programs aimed at
younger students in primary school are more
efficacious, because by the time students reach high
school their aspirations are likely to have been
established. The purpose of the MyTED project is to
awaken the aspirations of primary school aged
children and their parents from LSES backgrounds
and to build on these foundations into the middle
years of schooling. A tool to deliver the project in an
innovative and student centred way needed to be
found and built. From early on in the project the idea
was to use an electronic book to address complex
pedagogical strategies to stimulate the students
thinking about their aspirations.
Why an eBook?
An eBook was chosen, because a major
component of the MyTED project is to increase
literacy, in particular digital and written literacy.
Researchers such as McLean (2013) believe that it is
important to use digital media formats, such as an
eBook to teach literacy to primary school students.
Electronic books are one form of technology that
allows young children and struggling readers to
enjoy books independently due to electronic features
(Moody 2010). They provide additional
opportunities for students to read and explore as they
develop their literacy skills. Electronic books are
defined as an electronic form of a book with features
similar to those of a traditional print book including
pages that “turn,” and digital features that can assist
the reader such as word pronunciations, text
highlighting, text to speech options, and hypermedia
(e.g., video, animations, and sound) (Horney and
Anderson- Inman 1999; Korat and Shamir 2004).
Students who are beginning to learn to read or have
reading difficulties use eBooks in preference to a
traditional printed book. This is due to the digital
supports (McKenna, Reinking, Labbo and Kieffer
1999), pictures, cues and read aloud options that
enhance comprehension. Teachers are more and
more using eBooks with students who require the
motivation of digital media effects to become
engaged in reading. Engaged students may better
attend to a reading task by pointing to pictures and
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engaging in discussion about the book (McWilliam
et al. 2003). A number of studies highlight benefits
of eBooks on reading engagement when compared
to traditional books (De Jong and Bus 2002, 2003;
Fisch et al. 2002; Moody et al. in press; Talley et al.
1997). De Jong (2003 p147) argues that multimedia
modes for picture storybooks offer various ways of
supporting story understanding and other facets of
literacy.
The literature supports the notion that
multimedia tools, such as eBooks are ideal for
delivering teaching and learning content to the
young learners in a more immersive way compared
to printed learning material. Multimedia tools make
use of dynamic visuals and sound effects, starting
and restarting the oral reading of the text, printed
text that brightens or changes colour or size while
the text is narrated.. De Jong (2003 p 148) found
“evidence that feelings, mood and character actions,
elicited by filmic depth, sounds and voices, improve
the ability to make inferences about story events”.
Many young children have already had experiences
with eBooks and the use of digital devices such as
iPads where they can record sound, take pictures and
videos. Moody (2010 p23) mentions that electronic
books are nowadays widely used in early childhood
classrooms in an effort to encourage engagement in
storybooks while promoting emergent literacy
development.
The literature has supported our understanding
of the value of eBooks for literacy development of
early learners; however the following overarching
question remains. In what ways does an eBook
containing a story about aspirations encourage
primary school students to aspire to participate in
tertiary education?
In undertaking this enquiry we were guided by
questions such as:
• How does the eBook encourage children to
think about their ambitions?
• How does the eBook and its contents
support the engagement with the MyTED
story and theme?
• In what ways did the interactive worksheets
work for the Year 4 students?
• Was the content and design suitable for the
defined audience?
• In what ways can the eBook be improved?
In an effort to answer these questions the
decision was made to develop a program that
facilitates an eBook for Year 4 students aged eight
years to ten years, their parents and primary school
teachers..
3 METHODOLOGY
The MyTED program utilised a design-based
research methodology as this approach allowed for
the carrying out of both design and testing in the
context of a real-life settings (Barab et. al 2005
p.91). Although normally considered to be a
methodology primarily associated with educational
practice, the iterative nature of design-based
educational research aligns directly with the working
methods used extensively in both creative arts
practice and throughout the design professions. The
use of an educational, design-based research
methodology allowed us to create an initial eBook
application, which was used as a test vehicle. The
outcomes from this testing were used to improve the
application in an iterative process as is typically
done in most design related research.
To gain a better understanding of how teachers,
students and parents are responding to the design
and functionality of the MyTED eBook, the
researchers relied primarily on the gathering and
analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data,
which in turn determined the evolving technical
structure of the eBook story, structure and design.
Students, teachers and parents interacted with the
eBook during the broader MyTED program.
Throughout the program and during the testing of
the eBook the students were encouraged to think
about their aspirations for their future. The
effectiveness of the eBook is measured by
investigating the student’s knowledge, reactions and
experiences using four different methods that
included:
• Oral assessment through the use of
interviews with students and staff before
and after engaging with the eBook.
• Questionnaires at the end of the program.
• Confidential feedback from teachers based
on classroom observations.
• Observation in the field was enhanced
through video recording how students and
teachers interacted with the eBook and by
documenting a range of associated
activities.
In particular, teacher and student feedback and
interviews later proved to be a valuable source of
evidence that clarified many of the activities and
interactions that were evident in videotaped field
recordings
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4 THE eBook
The eBook was designed to support the literacy
component of the MyTED program. It sat within
phase two, the awakening aspirations phase along
with a number of other capacity building elements
that encouraged students to dream and to think about
their aspirations. The story was designed to help
students recognise the wishes and dreams of others,
such as those of the main character Edwina, and to
apply this understanding to oneself. We designed
and developed an electronic book, which blends the
benefits of multimedia elements, such as hyperlinks,
audio and video content, flexible text size and non-
linear structure. We also included interactive work
sheets and participatory research activities such as
Photovoice and MyVoice which stimulated the
thoughts of the students and parents to consider their
aspirations and career pathways.
The practical development of the first trial
version of the MyTED eBook was based on a paper
version of the eBook. It was used in a preliminary
study to identify a suitable back-story and a logical
unit plan and lesson sequence that aligned with the
Australian Curriculum learning area of English. The
eBook prototype was tested in 2013 with 85 Year 4
primary school students from two schools.
Researchers went into the classrooms and taught the
lessons to the students with the classroom teacher
also present. Parents were included at another
session that took place after school hours. A further
two hundred children took part in the second
iteration of the MyTED program in 2014.
For the second iteration the participating students
were typically between 7 and 10 years of age and
were drawn from seven Year 4 classes from schools
in different regions throughout Queensland,
Australia. The primary aim of the MyTED eBook
was to encourage students to think about their
aspirations and future career pathways. However, its
purpose was twofold as it was designed to improve
literacy, reading, comprehension and digital literacy.
To support these aims the eBook had a suitable
back-story, an appealing design, and a relevant mix
of multimedia features. The lesson plans were
detailed and were designed with pedagogical
practices that are relevant to the age group.
4.1 The Story
In 2013 a story about a secret agent named Billy
Bunting was developed but did not resonated with
students, they found it to be too confusing. What the
students did like and commented upon were the
native animals such as the kookaburra and the
kangaroo that were smart and exuded a sense of
wisdom. Inspired by the student feedback, the
researchers developed a new story that had an
orphaned young kangaroo at the centre of the
narration. We called the protagonist of the story
Edwina (Figure 1). A nickname for Edwina can be
Ted, which reflected the name of the program. The
University Campus where the study takes place is a
nature reserve with a resident mob of Eastern Grey
kangaroos. Edwina’s story prepared the children for
a visit and tour of the University later in the MyTED
program. The purpose of the campus visit was to
expose the students to a tertiary education facility at
an early age.
Figure 1: Edwina (Ted) meets Sally, Rudy and Jamie.
The main story is of struggle and how to
overcome adversity with knowledge, curiosity and
the development of aspirations. It is an open-ended
story that leads to the introduction of the in-school
delivery of the MyTED program by University staff,
Technical and Further Education in Australia
(TAFE) staff or primary school teachers.
Throughout the story the reader is prompted by
questions that promote deeper thinking and
hypertext links that further his or her understanding.
Both questions and hypertext links have been used
as a tool to teach the children about the Australian
wildlife, to think about emotions and feelings and to
explain Aboriginal terminologies. Some of the
questions stimulated a reflection of the readers’
schooling experiences. For example students were
asked to reflect on their first day at school and how
they felt on that day. Sound was used throughout the
eBook to identify the calling noises that Australian
native animals use and to promote a higher level of
engagement with the story. The illustrations first
shown to students in the paper prototype in 2013
received a positive reaction from the students as they
thought that they were very appealing and attractive.
It was decided to apply the same illustration style to
the new story in the 2014 eBook. Part of the story
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was that Edwina the kangaroo finally fulfils her
dream and is given a chance to attend her first day at
school. On this day Edwina and her classmates
discussed the possible meanings of an oil painting
they had been shown. The oil painting is located in
the library of the University they visited. The
painting had no defined back-story and it is was up
to the imagination of the viewer to make up his or
her own story for the picture (Figure 2). The
teachers depicted in the illustration look and dress
like the actual visitors from the University; the
authors of this paper. This activity provided students
with a link between Edwina’s story and the campus
visit and encouraged students to further consider
their aspirations.
Figure 2: Old Love by Peter Hudson.
4.2 The Design
The eBook was created in Adobe InDesign and
saved into Adobe Acrobat Interactive PDF format.
The title page of the eBook shows the main
character, Edwina, smiling towards the audience
while hopping happily from the left to the right
through a lush green landscape (Figure 3). The title
“MyTED: READY, SET, JUMP” was placed on the
top left hand side and the MyTED logo on the
bottom left corner. The title and cover image evoke
curiosity and a happy feeling that invites the
students to go further into the eBook and start
reading the Edwina story.
Figure 3: Ready, Set, Jump title page.
It was decided to create the eBook as a Portable
Document Format (PDF) file because of its
computer platform independency. It was decided to
use a tree-structured sidebar navigation that is
visible from the beginning and can be customised by
the reader from a pure text based index to an image
based thumbnail system (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Left Side Bar Navigation.
Another navigation system is located on each of
the 29 pages of the eBook including the cover page.
The system consists of a back and forward arrow
shaped button plus a button that represents the book
index. The index items are hyperlinks that can take
the reader directly to the desired book chapters or
lesson plans. Throughout the 29 pages of the
complete eBook the frame colours change from
green to earth coloured orange to purple depending
on the topic and activities of the MyTED program.
This assists the students to navigate and recognise
the relevant book content and activities quicker. It
also helps students that are highly visual learners
such as those with autistic spectrum disorders to find
their way through the book (Devine 2014).
In 2013 a smaller group of students was shown a
range of story aspects using different typefaces. One
of the typefaces the students liked the best was Rotis
Sans-Serif Light pt 20 for paragraphs and Rotis
Sans-Serif Bold pt 24 for headings. Rotis Sans-Serif
was designed by Otl Aicher in an attempt at
maximum legibility through a highly unified yet
varied typeface family (Frederich 1998). Legibility
was key when designing the MyTED eBook to
support young readers that struggle with legibility
issues. The goal was to make access to the text as
easy as possible. Every first paragraph of the main
story chapters starts with a green coloured Drop Cap
that spans the first three lines of the paragraph. The
drop caps are drawing attention and make it easier to
find the beginning of each chapter. The word limit
for each page of the main story is 150 words because
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more text would overwhelm and disengage the
young reader.
Multi-media features such as sound were used to
teach children how to identify native animal calls.
Videos play an important part in the makeup of the
eBook. Seven video interviews with staff and
students that had a very unusual pathway to study or
work at university are shown on page 27. The
children can click on an image thumbnail that shows
the person interviewed or on a play arrow
underneath the thumbnail to view the videos (Figure
5). The videos are up to a maximum of four minutes
in length to not over-stress the users’ attention span
and keep them involved and interested in the topic.
Once activated the videos open in a new browser
window that can be closed after having watched the
movie. This allowed the reader to go back to the
video page and keep interacting with the eBook.
Figure 5: Video interviews page: Video thumbnails with
player window to help simplify video playing.
In 2013 the researchers tested the video quality
and duration with 85 students and the specific video
style developed through montage worked well with
the participants. It should be noted that students lost
interest if the videos were longer than five minutes,
if more than three videos were shown in one
sequence and if the interviewee spoke using a
monotone voice. Other features of the eBook include
the interactive worksheets that can be filled in by
students and the ability to interact with Edwina via
email. Photographs can be emailed to Edwina who
lives and works at the University. Edwina, assisted
by the research team endeavoured to write back to
the students with some feedback and comments. The
second section of the eBook contains the lesson
material that teachers and students require during the
program. The lessons and worksheets are interactive
and can be printed, saved or emailed. In summary,
the MyTED eBook’s design concept with all its
elements and the structure supports the content of
the program and makes the interaction with the
story, lesson plans and its activities more engaging
for the young students.
5 TESTING THE eBook
The testing and development of the MyTED eBook
was done with the co-operation of the teachers and
students from schools located in low socio-economic
areas in South East and Central Queensland between
January 2013 and September 2014. The first study
group consisted of 85 primary school students and
the second consisted of 211 primary school students
all between the ages of 7 and 10 years. The study
was divided into two parts with the first part being
conducted in 2013. The students were asked
questions about the story, the learning content and
the eBook prototype, design and layout. The
responses from the students helped the researchers to
develop and customise the final eBook concept on
the basis of the students’ preferences. The
requirements of the Australian Curriculum also
informed the development of the eBook, in
particular, the learning content.
The second part of the study was conducted in
2014. This second iteration of the MyTED program
allowed the researchers to test the final eBook and to
gain valuable feedback that would inform any
further changes. The purpose of the second part of
the study was for the eBook to be embedded into the
MyTED program and to test it with students within
the school setting. The students were asked to
complete a feedback questionnaire at the end of the
second part of the study.
5.1 Findings of the 2013 and 2014
Studies
The results of both test trials suggested that the idea
behind the MyTED eBook was valid and that it was
possible to design an educational eBook that
engages Year 4 students in a program that awakens
their aspirations. It also stimulated discussions about
career pathways and was at the same time lots of fun
as stated by the majority of students that took part in
the MyTED program. The major difference between
2013 and 2014 was that in 2013 we tested a paper
based prototype and not a full functional eBook. In
2014 there was a slight increase in the number of
students that indicated they would consider tertiary
education. That could be due to the different eBook
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formats but also could be contributed to reasons
such as different student cohorts, teachers and
exposure to discussions around aspirations at home.
Students were able to identify the interactive
elements of the book such as clickable hyperlinks
highlighted in red, clickable buttons and in-text links
that make the images change and bring up additional
information. Navigating through the eBook posed no
problems for the students. More than half of the
students thought that it was easy to work with the
worksheets. This required them to fill in text, insert
photographs taken with an iPad during the
Photovoice activities and to name and save the
worksheets. Almost eighty percent of the
participating students enjoyed taking photographs
with an iPad. The photography included taking a
‘selfie’ and several other photographs that
represented their aspirations for the future. Four of
these photographs were placed into an aspirations
pathway App (application software). The students
enjoyed placing the selected photos into the App
which was part of the eBook. Some comments from
students included: “I like the activities that you
picked for us”, “It was lots of fun”; “Can we do it
again in grade 5?” Another activity in the eBook
required students to draw images of their aspirations
instead of taking photographs. Surprisingly, 91% of
students found this activity even more “fun” than
taking the photographs using a digital device. Some
students engaged with the activity so intently that
they forgot about time and space. The following
quotes illustrate how engaged students were with the
process of drawing and reflecting on their
aspirations and possible career pathways: “I liked
drawing most”; “You can use your imagination”; “I
drew a teacher because I really want to become a
teacher”; “I like drawing and I want to tell people
what I want to be”; “You can be more creative”.
The illustrations of the eBook also received positive
feedback with over 90% of the children liking the
illustrations, the style, the artwork and characters of
the Edwina story. Fifty-eight percent of all students
liked Edwina’s story very much, thirty-five percent
found the story “OK” and only five percent did not
like the story at all. Two schools out of the six stood
out as finding the story “just OK”. Those schools are
located within rural farming communities where
kangaroos are seen as a pest that eats a lot of grass
which could go to feed the cattle instead. Overall,
the students would not like to have seen a different
story in the eBook and were very happy to read
about Edwina’s journey. The majority related to her
and became quite attached to the character which
became clear when the students went to the
University. The first thing they wanted to see was
Edwina and all of her kangaroo friends that live on
the campus grounds. The researchers were asking if
the students would like to see animations in the
eBook. The literature is suggesting that animation is
very popular with children aged 8 to 10 years due to
the high level of entertainment they provide.
Interestingly enough, only 61% of the 211 students
surveyed thought that animations would be of
benefit to the eBook. Surprisingly, when asked if
they would like to see teaching games integrated
into the eBook, 90% thought that this would be a
great idea. The schools that participated in the
research program were well equipped with
computers and children play educational games on a
regular basis. Therefore, it can be assumed that
many students are already familiar with computer
games and enjoy playing games.
Overall, students indicated there was a high level
of pleasure associated with engaging with the
MyTED eBook. To the authors, perhaps the two
things that came across most strongly from both
eBook trials in 2013 and 2014 was the enjoyment
and pleasure of being outside away from the
constraints of the classroom and taking photographs
for the Photovoice activity. It was quite clear from
both written student feedback and follow up
discussions that working in groups on the eBook
activities, implementing content into the work sheets
and being away from the classroom were the major
attractions of interacting with the eBook. Students
were asked if they preferred the eBook over a
conventional book and the majority answered YES
because of the high level of interactive activities
provided in the eBook. Important feedback provided
by teachers and the parents of the students was that
the interaction with the MyTED eBook started
conversations amongst students and outside of
school with their friends and families about
aspirations that they otherwise would not have had.
6 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE
RESEARCH
The data and findings described derive from two
studies over the past two years that were conducted
only with Year 4 students. This was to ascertain the
impact that the eBook had on awakening aspirations.
It would have been desirable to have had a control
group of students that had undergone the MyTED
program without the use of the eBook. For this
reason, it is suggested that further studies be
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191
undertaken with control group classes from the same
schools. The benefits associated with education
using electronic books and multimedia delivery
formats are well documented in the literature, but it
would be very interesting, some years from now, to
evaluate the effectiveness of the eBook, when
students reach the age to enter tertiary education
and who are in similar social and economic contexts.
The question could be asked about what percentage
of students had access to the eBook and entered the
tertiary education versus students that did not have
access to it.
7 CONCLUSIONS
The findings clearly demonstrate that the MyTED
eBook supports the delivery of the MyTED program
to Year 4 students. The multimedia format, the
custom designed layout, illustrations, engaging story
and learning activities embedded in the eBook
clearly help to engage students in the program. The
eBook also shows that individual and group tasks
such as Photovoice and MyVoice can be designed to
bring students together to engage in co-operative
learning activities.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank all of the Principals, parents,
staff and students from the six participating schools
who helped us in conducting the two studies in 2013
and 2014.
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