Learning with educational apps: A qualitative study of the most popular free apps in Norway

The paper presents the findings of a qualitative study of the top 50 free educational apps in Norway on March 3rd 2016 and September 3rd 2015, focusing on how the apps can be used in a learning process. The apps were analyzed based on a number of educational categories, e.g. which pedagogical method is the app built upon, what level of the revised Bloom's taxonomy does the app cover and what are the added values of the app compared to traditional classroom teaching. The research question of the study is: What are the educational characteristics of the most popular apps in the Norwegian App Store? We found that the apps are based on a variety of pedagogical methods. There is a predominance of drill and practice-apps, but there are also apps based on presentation, tutorial, gaming and demonstration in addition to discovery, problem solving and simulation. Discussion and collaboration as pedagogical methods are not found among the apps from the top 50 charts. Some apps allow for construction of content, like images, audio, video, mind maps etc. We have demonstrated how many apps cover the lower level of Bloom's revised taxonomy, but that some of the apps also can cover the Create level of the taxonomy. It is not hard to describe added values of most of the apps, if one sees the factors isolated from each other. Examples of added values are repetitions, immediate feedback, fun, creative tools, variation, and pronunciation. The paper discusses how added values also can turn into distractions and how many of the “free” apps unfortunately have major limitations in the free version.