How Platform Influences Learning By Age Group:

In 2019, I noticed that while there was a gradual trend in student performance, there was a noticeable crater in the performance of very young students using an online literacy program. In conjunction with my research department director at the time, we investigated my hunch that part of the reason why younger students struggle with the program is because of the insufficient motor development required to skillfully operate a keyboard and mouse. We compared the performance of this age group on keyboard and mouse vs. on tablets to see if using a touchscreen interface (something that small children take to easily) had any bearing on their performance. Students using tablets performed better in the literacy games on measures of speed, completion rate, and rate of hitting educational benchmarks. These findings suggest that children may perform better on computer-based tasks which measure speed when barriers to operational skill are removed. Very young children have yet to develop fine motor control and thus some of them can be expected to struggle to use a keyboard and mouse. By utilizing touchscreens in this age group we can meet children where they are operationally in order to facilitate learning. This research was also presented at an EdTech conference in Chicago.