Effectiveness of BrainPop, Article Review Example

The Study of the Effectiveness of BrainPOP 2009. New Hope: SEG Research. Retrieved from: http://www.brainpop.com/about/research

Summary         

In interest of providing all students with equal and substantive educational opportunities, and teachers with application methodologies and instruments for facilitating those objectives, school districts are finding that alternative approaches to instructional learning, and in particular, the offerings of new media technologies highly effective. Responsive to both group and one-on-one settings, BrainPOP can be utilized to facilitate curricula content from introductory lessons to complex subject matter according to U.S. federal government standards, and offers a compendium of searchable topics which extends to the repository of data developed by individual educators. The foregoing analysis looks at the BrainPOP web based, animated instructional tool study of 1,100 students in 46 classrooms in Palm Beach County, Florida and New York City, New York (SEG Research, 2009). Student outcomes to the experiment reveal significant advancement in SAT scores in Language, Reading Comprehension and Science, and with some improvement to Vocabulary. The 2009 report on the Study’s findings describes the instructional program and strategy, and projected effectiveness of the instructional application in raising student standardized test scores nationwide.

Analysis of Methodology

The controlled, 16-20 study of students in grades 3, 5 and 8 showed marked improvement in +.17 for Language, +.34 for Reading Comprehension and +.29 for Science, and with moderate gains in Vocabulary at +.09 amongst the treatment group in comparison with the control group that was not exposed to the BrainPOP instructional tool (SEG Research, 2009). BrainPOP users increased SAT scores by between 11 and 24 points; with statistical aggregation generated by ANCOVA revealing universal covariance between the two groups with increases in achievement regardless of ethnicity, gender and other factors amongst users. Free lunch services, and inference to nutritional intake amongst students, did not have any impact on the findings. The common metric indicates that such attempts at employing the tool as a grounded model of learning development should promote achievement above the current national index across the board. Due to the “effect size” of the study on the population, districts might find that implementation of a replicable study may produce similar results. Teacher participation in application of the tool should be prefaced by introduction to the rationale of the study, and intended forthcoming use of the tool as a viable technology for learning in their classrooms. Introduction to the instructional application is included in the educator phase of the research design, and data is collected on teacher’ perceptions prior to commencement of the study, and subsequent outcome to the employment of the tool amongst the treatment group. In fact, while perceptions of the instructional application were largely positive at the outset of the research, results show that 90% of teachers reporting a “good” or “excellent” impact on student cognitive growth, correlated to a 90% outcome in student attitude in use value.

Recommendations for Implementation

School districts largely comprised of target schools or designated as serving underserved populations like those in the study stand to benefit the most from the support toward enhancement of web based, animated instructional learning tools. Those students receive the least in terms of at home technology based tutorials, and districts are pressured to create standardized settings that might otherwise substantiate equivalent access to those resources. Teachers are a critical aspect of the research study. Review of educator’s professional opinions about how technological tools might enhance the facilitation of learning in the classroom are essential to the BrainPOP Study, and are an integral part of the implementation strategy and  interpretative measure within the findings. Conclusively, 100% of the teachers participating in the Study reported that they would recommend the tool to other educators.

In 2009, Federal allocation to the U.S. Department of Education in response to the $14.5 billion request for the reauthorized Title I, Part A, Grants to Local Educational Agencies was solicited toward mitigation of student outcomes in the lowest-performing schools across the nation. The fund assists states, districts and schools in the realization of instructional improvements. A readily accessible and easily employed learning technology, BrainPOP’s cost effective investment toward sustained growth in student performance promises much to districts seeking to shore up traditional learning methodologies.