'Across and Beyond the Screens: Investigating Children's Joint Engagement with Educational Media and Related Activities'. This case study investigated children’s learning experiences in a media-inspired summer camp. The purpose of the study was to explore how educational media can be used to extend children’s learning experiences across the screens (television, mobile, tablet) and beyond these screens through hands-on maker activities, with a focus on their engagement.
The dissertation is roughly 150 pages, and also contains summary of the maker activities I designed for this study.
Watch Dissertation Presentation Video >>
In this (roughly 20 min) video, I will walk you through the key findings of my research. Analysis of data suggests that viewing media and doing maker activities in groups allowed opportunities for joint engagement among children and facilitators. Semi-structured maker activities yielded higher engagement for children compared to structured activities. Limited references to media were observed in children’s conversations during the maker activities, leading to lack of clarity about the role consonance of media and making played in the overall engagement for children. Future research on joint engagement should consider adding prompts during the maker activities that directly reference the media to generate more contextual conversations among children and facilitators.