Here are some more results from my survey — setup and details see part 1. Please keep in mind that three different groups (which are rather small) have been asked – with different education level (9-11) and taught different subjects.
The second batch of questions is about the ease of use of Mahara. Again — since publication of the first study (see below – translation see my results) more than 5 years have changed not only our students but also Mahara.
Again the results for the youngest students (9/Computer Science) are overwhelming: no result is below “Quite OK” although they did essentially the same tasks as the next group (10/German).
The results for the oldest students (11/Maths) are a little bit similar to the original study although the range “Very easy” to “Easy” is much bigger — whereas this was at a maximum at 45% in the original study this is minimum here and goes up to 75%. Additionally there are almost no “Difficult” ranges — but there are many “Very difficult” scores. The last result in comparison to the two other groups could be due to some advanced tasks they had to do like embedding iframes from Geogebra into views, which, although they are more experienced, is a difficult task for many of them. A second cause could be the subject: maths already is complex enough, adding a presentation layer task does not make easier the overall “burden”.
Summing up:
- Even in the worst case (and difficult tasks) the results are far better then about 5 years ago.
- For younger students Mahara is just very simple. No problems at all.
What are your experiences?
[…] See more results in part 2. […]