Educational Technology - Blended Learning
M. Omidi Shal; B. Bandali; Mahmood Abolghasemi; S. Saadati
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Reading and writing, in addition to being considered as the human necessities for today life, are one of the pillars of literacy and basic skills in education and learning. One of the goals of the literacy is to develop and strengthen the reading and writing skills of students. ...
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Background and Objectives: Reading and writing, in addition to being considered as the human necessities for today life, are one of the pillars of literacy and basic skills in education and learning. One of the goals of the literacy is to develop and strengthen the reading and writing skills of students. However, some national and international studies have shown the weakness of Iranian students in these two skills. In addition, weakness in reading and writing causes problems in understanding other subjects as well. Therefore, due to the important role of reading and writing skills in the learning and academic progress of students, as well as the need to investigate the factors affecting the academic performance and the efficiency of the educational system, the investigation of this issue was considered in this research. Given the components of reading and writing skills, as well as inefficient teaching methods resulting in this failure, one of the activities that can play an effective role in solving the problem is storytelling. With the development of technology in different fields, digital storytelling has also been used in education. Previous research revealed the positive effect of using traditional and digital stories in teaching different subjects, competencies and skills among learners, but no comparison was made between them. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to compare the effect of two teaching methods based on digital and traditional storytelling on the reading and writing skills of first-grade primary school students.Methods: This was an applied study carried out with quantitative approach and quasi-experimental design. A sample of 50 students of the first grade of an all-boys primary public school in Rasht, Iran in the academic year of 2022-2023 were selected through convenience sampling method to participate in this research. They were assigned to experimental and control groups. Five letters of the first primary Persian Literacy were taught in the experimental group by presenting a digital story. In the control group, the same letters were taught through the same stories in a traditional way by the teacher. The stories were approved by educational experts and first grade school teachers as well. After teaching each letter, both groups took part in a test developed by the team leader of first grade teachers district 1 of education department in Rasht. The validity of the tests was confirmed by educational experts and elementary teachers. To ensure reliability, the measurement process was repeated for five letters of the Persian alphabet, all research processes were documented and the subjects' normal conditions were maintained in the evaluation process. The data were analyzed via inferential statistics methods including Anderson-Darling test, the Mann-Whitney U test and independent samples t-test.Findings: Results showed that the mean scores of both groups in all tests were similarly above the theoretical mean and no significant difference was found considering the performance of the two groups.Conclusion: Considering the capabilities that storytelling has in improving learning outcomes, it can be said that using stories, both in traditional and digital form, can be used as an effective method in teaching Persian and improving the reading and writing skills of primary school students. Also, accuracy in educational design and appropriate learning activities can enrich the use of traditional and digital stories in the education process.
