Improving Children’s E-Safety Skills through an Interactive Learning Environment: A Quasi-Experimental Study

• Main Authors: Iolie Nicolaidou, Agnes Venizelou
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-04-01
• Series: Multimodal Technologies and Interaction
• Subjects: e-safety skills; children; personal data protection; avoiding hackers; cyberbullying; protection from malware
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2414-4088/4/2/10

There is a worldwide concern for young children’s online safety and a growing necessity for e-safety skills to be taught to children from a young age as part of formal schooling. The purpose of this study was to design and evaluate the effectiveness and motivational capacity of an interactive web-based learning environment for improving children’s e-safety skills. A quasi-experimental pre-test post-test control group design was used with an experimental group of 48 sixth-grade primary school students, who used the web-based learning environment over two 80-min lessons, and a control group of 25 students who did not. Findings revealed a statistically significant difference (t(47) = −14.06, <i>p</i> < 0.01) in the experimental group students’ e-safety performance, when students’ pre-test scores (mean (Μ) = 41.13, SD = 10.47) were compared to their post-test scores (Μ = 56.69, SD = 9.38). The analysis of an attitudes questionnaire and of student interviews documented the experimental group students’ positive attitudes toward the learning environment. Findings provide evidence of the effectiveness and motivational capacity of the web-based learning environment, which can be used in either formal education or informal learning settings, for improving children’s e-safety skills.