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This study, by critically analyzing material from multiple sources, aims to provide an overview of what is available on evaluation tools for educational apps for children. To realize this objective, a systematic literature review was conducted to search all English literature published after January 2010 in multiple electronic databases and internet sources. Various combinations of search strings were used due to database construction differences, while the results were cross-referenced to discard repeated references, obtaining those that met the criteria for inclusion.

The present study was conducted according to the methods provided by Khan et al. (2003) and Thomé et al. (2016). The whole procedure included four stages: planning the review, identifying relevant studies in the literature, critical analysis of the literature, summarizing and interpreting the findings (Figure 1). Furthermore, in this analysis, a well-known checklist, PRISMA, was also used as a recommendation (Moher et al., 2015).

These review results reveal that, although there are several evaluation tools, in their majority they are not considered adequate to help teachers and parents to evaluate the pedagogical affordances of educational apps correctly and easily. Indeed, most of these tools are considered outdated. With the emergence of new issues such as General Data Protection Regulation, the quality criteria and methods for assessing children's products need to be continuously updated and adapted (Stoyanov et al., 2015). Some of these tools might be considered as good beginnings, but their “limited dimensions make generalizable considerations about the worth of apps” (Cherner, Dix and Lee, 2014, p. 179). Thus, there is a strong need for effective evaluation tools to help parents and teachers when choosing educational apps (Callaghan and Reich, 2018).

Even though this work is performed by following the systematic mapping guideline, threats to the validity of the results presented still exist. Although custom strings that contained a rich collection of data were used to search for papers, potentially relevant publications that would have been missed by the advanced search might exist. It is recommended that at least two different reviewers should independently review titles, abstracts and later full papers for exclusion (Thomé et al., 2016). In this study, only one reviewer – the author – selected the papers and did the review. In the case of a single researcher, Kitchenham (2004) recommends that the single reviewer should consider discussing included and excluded papers with an expert panel. The researcher, following this recommendation, discussed the inclusion and exclusion procedure with an expert panel of two professionals with research experience from the Department of (removed for blind review). To deal with publication bias, the researcher in conjunction with the expert panel used the search strategies identified by Kitchenham (2004) including: Grey literature, conference proceedings, communicating with experts working in the field for any unpublished literature.

The purpose of this study was not to advocate any evaluation tool. Instead, the study aims to make parents, educators and software developers aware of the various evaluation tools available and to focus on their strengths, weaknesses and credibility. This study also highlights the need for a standardized app evaluation (Green et al., 2014) via reliable tools, which will allow anyone interested to evaluate apps with relative ease (Lubniewski et al., 2018). Parents and educators need a reliable, fast and easy-to-use tool for the evaluation of educational apps that is more than a general guideline (Lee and Kim, 2015). A new generation of evaluation tools would also be used as a reference among the software developers, designers to create educational apps with real educational value.

The results of this study point to the necessity of creating new evaluation tools based on research, either in the form of rubrics or checklists to help educators and parents to choose apps with real educational value.

However, to date, no systematic review has been published summarizing the available app evaluation tools. This study, by critically analyzing material from multiple sources, aims to provide an overview of what is available on evaluation tools for educational apps for children.

This paper presents a thematic review of app-enabled learning in the context of recent developments in mobile technology and m-learning. Three key themes are presented that reflect the issues that teachers, school leaders and systems have grappled with in recent years.

Drawing on findings from a range of case studies and literature reviews, the present time is examined as an opportunity to explore more pedagogically informed uses of mobile devices, and “app smashing” is suggested as an approach that moves the learner beyond the underlying limitations of constraining the learning to individual apps.

Findings include the benefits and limitations of mobile devices for learning in current education institutions. The paper also highlights several contexts where “app smashing” has been achieved and identifies the implications for educators across all educational contexts moving forward.

While educators and learners alike continue to wrestle with understanding and meaningfully using a growing number of tools, platforms and ecosystems, more recent paradigms such as cloud computing now point to “device agnosticism” and “convergence” as the new normal (Garner et al., 2005; Prince, 2011).

At the same time, there is the emergence of what Rideout et al. (2013) refer to as the “app gap”, in which “lower-income children (ages 0-8) have more than 50 per cent less experience using mobile devices than higher-income children in the same age group” (p. 10). Combined with the problems of app overload, the lack of institutional support, insufficient guidance and unclear policy, there remain some pressing issues that need to be addressed.

By designing the learning task as independent of the technology, the teacher is arguably better equipped to carefully and purposefully select apps as cognitive steppingstones within the learning task, resulting in tasks that more consistently challenge students to develop a wide range of digital skills. As Berson et al. (2012) note, through the use of carefully selected apps, students “learn a new form of literacy as they move between apps and engage in both personalized and collaborative learning experiences” (p. 89).

The paper sheds light on the areas where mobile devices are most likely to benefit learning in the coming years.

Mobile devices, through their capacity to enable anytime-anywhere learning as well as capture, annotate and share multimedia, offer entirely new ways for students to learn. This chapter provides review of mobile learning with a particular focus on learning design. First various definitions and characteristics of mobile learning are examined in order to establish a common understanding of its boundaries and meaning. Example uses of mobile learning in schools and higher education are described as a way to provide a more concrete understanding of design possibilities. Benefits of mobile learning are unpacked, as distilled from the literature, including the ability to provide flexible, accessible, authentic, personalized, ubiquitous and seamless learning. Mobile learning issues are also examined, including technical problems, cognitive load issues, distraction, equity and safety. A primary school science and a university pre-service teacher education vignette are described so as to offer a more in-depth illustration of what mobile learning can look like and achieve in practice. Finally, mobile learning research findings and observations are synthesized into recommendations, to inform and guide evidence-based mobile learning design practices. Opportunities for future research and investigation are also discussed.

Numerous educational applications (APP) have been developed to assist traditional classroom teaching and student learning. APP quality plays a critical role in influencing students' learning behaviors. However, the role negative mindsets, especially computer anxiety, play in how APP quality affects student engagement remains unknown. To address the relationships among APP quality, computer anxiety and student engagement in an APP-based learning environment, we developed an extended information system (IS) success model that includes interface and instructor quality.

To empirically test the proposed model, we conducted a survey with a sample of 225 university students and examined the hypotheses using the partial least squares (PLS) method.

Computer anxiety was demonstrated to fully mediate the relationships between student engagement and interface quality and service quality and system quality. In addition, the instructor quality acts as a partial mediator of the relationship between computer anxiety and student engagement.

This study reveals the important mediating role of computer anxiety in APP-assisted learning and the special status of instructor quality and user experience in influencing student engagement. The findings of this study shed meaningful light on the practical implications for instructors and APP software developers.

Accessibility design over the past several years has focused much of its attention on the development of a universal standard or a set of guidelines for delivering a diverse array of both content and instructional processes. Universal design for learning (UDL), for example, promotes providing multiple means of (a) representation, (b) action and expression, and (c) engagement for learners who have a wide range of disabilities as well as their typical peers. And while each instructional design element that represents a means of providing the differentiation required by the principle generally has a strong evidence-based support individually, it is difficult to assess any one of them within the larger ULD “multiple means” milieu of options. It is especially difficult to do this in regard to learners associated with any particular disability category. When it comes to targeted instruction, learner characteristics matter. It follows then that when it comes to developing an instructional design, that the learning characteristics of a targeted population be first and foremost considered as the point of departure in the design and development process. This chapter considers a wide range of instructional targets within the context of specific disability groups with a focus on learning goals, instructional design supports for those goals, and underlying cognitive processes that may help clarify the goals themselves as well as the instructional supports to achieve those goals.

This qualitative, exploratory study uses constructs from the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and construct variables from literature, as a basis to ascertain similarities and differences in the behaviour by business undergraduates (UGs) and postgraduates (PGs) of mobile apps and the purpose of this paper is to suggest implications for consumer behaviour theory and marketing practice for the two groups of students.

Literature informed us of the paucity of research on the relationship between behavioural theory and mobile apps usage in the Asia region. An exploratory and interpretivist approach, with thematic analysis, was employed to aid in data processing.

The investigative outcomes highlighted more similarities than dissimilarities in terms of perceived attitude (e.g. mood, ethical guilt, familiarity, addiction) and more differences in perceived subjective norms (e.g. family, friends, classmates and teammates) and perceived users’ behavioural control (e.g. promotional inducements, self-confidence) towards the usage of mobile apps exhibited by two different sets of data.

Homogeneity of participants, small sample size and generalisability of results were the main concern, hence, it warrants further research. In addition a cross-cultural comparison would be beneficial which might generate more meaningful results.

The research, albeit exploratory, serves as a guide for marketers and apps content providers to focus on usability of features and functions of apps as well as credibility, social context, timing, location, excitement of advertisements and promotional messages especially when marketing to the 18-30-age group. The research also shows that practitioners should be nuanced in their appeals to UGs and PGs.

Despite the provision of numerous mobile apps, this study, using the constructs of the TPB as a basis, offers a new insight into the reasons for, and usage of, specific and top popular apps (e.g. FB, Whatsapps and WeChat) Malaysian students used which reflects a varied behavioural dimension as opposed to planned behaviour.

This study aims to explore customer perceived value (CPV) dimensions in the context of free mobile educational applications (EduApps) which are paramount in learning-based digital start-ups and are essential for the implementation of circular economy (CE). The purpose of the present study is to identify dimensions of CPV specifically for EduApps and propose a conceptual model that would assist the digital start-up decisions which in turn can be a catalyst in navigating to a CE.

The study uses the Netnography approach by analyzing online user-generated content. A total of 13,147 reviews posted on the Google play store after using top free education apps were coded using ATLAS.ti 9 software.

Major dimensions of context-specific CPV are identified as technical value, content value, pedagogical value, gamification value and learning value. Subdimensions and items are extracted for each of these dimensions.

The larger subscriber base drives sponsorships, advertisements and donations which underpin the business model of free EduApps. This can be obtained through an attractive value proposition. Identifying context-specific value dimensions would aid entrepreneurs in optimal value mix development decisions. The proposed framework can be utilized by both researchers (for scale creation, comparative studies and quantitative studies) and practitioners (for entrepreneurial decisions on better value propositions).

CPV successfully describes consumer decision-making, but less attention is paid to linking the theory to the setting of mobile learning apps, where the bulk of research is focused on techniques like TAM, UTAUT, etc. In addition, studies identifying CPV from mobile apps with a specific focus on EduApps are sparse. Extant literature in this context is either based on a foundation of in-store business value dimensions or dominated by technical aspects when focused on the context of mobile apps. The current study bridges this gap.

Internet addiction (IA) has become a global health problem. As the research on IA has progressed, this study aims to explore the antecedents and consequences of IA, particularly in the Indian context. A conceptual model was developed, and hypotheses were formulated based on the conceptual model and the hypotheses were tested.

This study investigated 752 schools and collected students from the southern part of India. First, psychometric properties of the survey instrument were tested, and hierarchical regression was used to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that time spent on the internet every day is positively related to IA, internet experience in terms of years is positively related to IA, income and gender moderates the relationship between time spent every day on the internet and internet experience and IA and IA is positively related to time spent on networking, video streaming, short video apps, educational apps, chat apps, online shopping apps, money-involved apps, etc.

The outcomes of this study are essential for the school and college students and their parents. As IA has become chronic in the present-day digital world, it is necessary to take rectification measures to avoid facing the perils of IA. The conceptual model provides a simple framework of explaining how young students spend their time on the internet to become addicted gradually. Furthermore, this study highlights the importance of controlling the younger generation's behavior, particularly regarding internet use.

This study is unique and innovative to the extent that it explores the antecedents of IA and the moderating role of gender and income in the relationship between the time spent on the internet and the IA. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, developing a conceptual model is the first of its kind to study school and college students in India.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of an iPad application called iPocket Coach that can be used with a mobile device in business education.

This paper discusses the educational benefits of this application for classroom use and develops a pedagogical exercise by which students can build interpersonal skills.

The iPocket Coach can not only be used to develop skills but learn about common management issues involving conflict resolutions, personal development, providing constructive feedback, interviewing, performance evaluations, promotions, rewards, and terminations.

The exercise developed can be used in a consumer behavior or sales management course that teaches students how to handle difficult customers.