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

This study explored how early elementary school students (third grade) developed understanding of seasons through participating in a series of interactive e-learning activities. The findings of this study indicated that the students held somewhat alternative conceptions regarding seasons which needed to be addressed during lessons, such as seasons are distributed unevenly, or summer is the longest and includes the months of June to September. The students would gradually develop accepted science concepts of seasons through discussing personal opinions of seasons using the online forum and analyzing the weather data of temperature, humidity, and rainfall as evidence to explain season distribution. These findings support that e-learning resources can be useful for bringing about conceptual changes and knowledge construction among early elementary students.

Moreover, it was found that the students' awareness and skills of scientific explanations with evidence use might be developed through the process of online discussion and data analysis, which might benefit the students' cognitive development in the long run. Hence, it is suggested that science teachers might consider providing adequate opportunities for early elementary students to analyze data or information, to generate evidence-based explanations, and to share their explanations in the class. However, this study was limited to exploring the learning behaviors of students in one class in Hong Kong. The sample size was limited. Further studies may be conducted to involve more classes across the grades of the early elementary education stage to get more valuable insights into how young learners interact with e-learning resources to obtain more generalized results.

Acknowledgement

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (EdUHK 18607515).