From action to slowmation: enhancing preschoolers’ story comprehension ability and learning intention

ABSTRACT

In this study we adopted the slowmation approach to investigate children’s story comprehension ability and learning intentions. A digital system called Captube was designed to capture children’s actions and present them in slowmation format at different speeds. A total of 317 children aged between 4 and 7 were invited to participate in this study. Evaluation activities were conducted before and after playing with the Captube system to examine the effects of slowmation. The results showed that the children had vague comprehension of slowmation and comic books in the beginning, but their story comprehension performance was enhanced after they had experiences of the Captube play. They also revealed more interest in dynamic slowmation than still comic books, which implies that their learning intentions were supported by slowmation. The findings of this study could shed some light on educational approaches for preschool children.

KEYWORDS:

• Captube
• slowmation
• learning intention
• story comprehension
• early childhood education

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all the participants and teachers who joined and shared their experiences in this research.

Disclosure statement

We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work. There is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled.

Statements on open data, ethics

We declare that the data will be available by research application directly to the authors. The research data can be accessed upon request. Ethical permissions were obtained to collect the data from different university and preschool contexts. All participants’ data were treated and stored confidentially and anonymously. All participants understood and agreed to their participation in the study.

Additional information

Funding

Funding of this research work is supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, under [grant numbers MOST 107-2635-H-153-002 and MOST 106-2511-S-218-003].

Notes on contributors

Tsai-Yun Mou

Tsai-Yun Mou is currently an Assistant Professor in Department of Visual Arts, National Pingtung University. Her research interests include 3D animation design, story design and development, and innovative animation teaching that integrates STEAM education.

Chia-Pin Kao

Chia-Pin Kao is currently a Professor in Department of Child Care and Education, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research fields include teacher’s professional development, online learning, and early childhood technology and science learning.

Horng-Horng Lin

Horng-Horng Lin is currently an Assistant Professor in Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research topics include graphic recognition, machine learning, and image processing.

Zong-Xian Yin

Zong-Xian Yin is currently an Associate Professor in Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research interests include artificial intelligence, intelligent data analysis, and machine learning.