Why e-learning matters: developing early elementary school students' understanding of the Seasons

Participants

One class of third-grade students from one local primary school was invited to participate in this study on a voluntary basis. The teacher was not very familiar with the use of e-learning materials in their science classes before this study. To ensure sustainable participation, the teacher and the parents of the students were notified formally that they would be studied and observed intensively. Consent forms were collected from the teacher and the parents.

Lesson implementation regarding seasons

In the Hong Kong educational system, the topic of "The Seasons" is taught in Grade 3 in elementary schools. In this study, the third-grade students learnt about this topic with a newly designed e-textbook via tablets. The e-textbook offers multimedia resources such as dialogue cartoons, videos, animations, digital games, and various cognitive tools such as information and data collection, or online forums to bring students multi-sensory and diversified learning experiences while learning about the seasons (So, 2012; So, Fok, Liu, & Ching, 2015).

Moreover, this topic affords an evidence-based inquiry approach, by providing static and/or dynamic data and information to aid young students to construct understanding of the concept of seasons, particularly seasons' distribution throughout the year and weather characteristics after they learnt this topic. The evidence-based inquiry approach emphasizes the necessity of having students construct evidence-based scientific explanations as essential to scientific inquiry (McNeill & Krajcik, 2008). Previous studies have indicated that engaging in the inquiry practice involving explanation and argumentation can benefit students' development of knowledge understanding (Zohar & Nemet, 2002), and ability of justifying claims (McNeill, Lizotte, Krajcik, & Marx, 2006).

The implementation of lessons regarding "The Seasons" lasted for three lessons. Table 1 summarizes the objectives, activities, and e-learning materials or tools used in each lesson.

Table 1. The objectives, activities, and e-learning materials or tools used in each lesson

Lesson	Objectives	Activities	E-learning materials or tools
1	Discussing prior conceptions of seasons	Voting game	Dialogue cartoons Online forum
1	Discussing prior conceptions of season distribution Developing skills of giving evidence-based explanations	Coloring game	Online forum
2-3	Constructing conceptions of season distribution and the reasons Developing skills of giving evidence-based explanations or summaries	Data categorizing and analyzing activity	Graphic data extracted from local weather observatory website Quizzes with emotional cartoons as instant system feedback

Data collection

This study mainly used lesson observations and cognitive walkthroughs to investigate how students construct concepts of seasons through e-learning.

Lesson observations were used to capture the features of the students' learning behaviors during e-learning, focusing on how the students carried out the e-learning activities (e.g., voting game, coloring game, data categorizing, and analyzing activities) and how they made use of the e-learning materials (e.g., dialogue cartoon, graphic data, quizzes) or tools (e.g., online forums). All three lessons were video-taped for further analysis.

Cognitive walkthrough (CW) was used to track the students' cognitive reactions as they performed e-learning (Amichai-Hamburger, Kaynar, & Fine, 2007; Shih, Feng, & Tsai, 2008; Wharton, Rieman, Lewis, & Polson,1994). In this study, the walkthroughs were conducted individually with three students who were randomly selected from the class after all lessons were taught. The students were asked about how they cognitively interacted with the e-learning resources regarding the topic of "The Seasons." Sample questions were: How did you operate the activity to achieve your learning objective? and How did you make use of the weather data to explain how seasons are distributed? The data collected from the student cognitive walkthroughs were used as supplementary materials to obtain a more intensive knowledge of the students' learning behaviors in the e-learning classroom.

Data analysis

Lesson observations were transcribed and analyzed using content analysis. For each e-learning activity, how the students operated the e-learning interfaces and how they interacted with their peers and the teacher were analyzed. Specific attention was paid to analyzing how the students took evidence-based explanations or summaries and subsequently constructed understanding of the seasons with the e-learning resources. For the analysis of the students' cognitive walkthroughs, all walkthroughs were transcribed, coded and categorized to identify the students' e-learning patterns. The data of the lesson observations and walkthroughs were triangulated to obtain a holistic understanding of the students' performance in an e-learning classroom and to build validity and reliability.