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Project Report: Action Research

Quintella Deas

Coastal Carolina University

EDIT 677
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Introduction:

Teaching STEM this 2020-2021 school year, has come with many challenges. Last year

was the first year that elementary students in my district were offered Project Lead The Way

(PLTW) curriculum to teach STEM and that year ended abruptly due to Covid-19. This year the

students began the first few months of school on a hybrid schedule where they only attended

school two days (A and B Day) or four days (G Day) a week. A-Day students attended on

Monday and Tuesday, and B-Day students attended on Wednesday and Friday. The G-Day

students, which consisted of ELL students that needed extra instructional time, attended

Monday-Thursday. This led to our special area schedule changing from meeting with students

one day a week every week to meeting with students twice a week every 5 weeks. The G Day

students got the same special area four days in a row, which led to them getting the same two

lessons for four days.

With such young learners, it is already a struggle to ensure that kids are able to retain the

information that is taught to them, especially when it’s brand new to them. I needed to find a way

to teach the basic skills of the PLTW curriculum, which is using the Engineering Design Process.

I knew there was no way I could teach the PLTW modules with that type of schedule we were

on. I developed two-day lessons for the students that required them to use the Design Process. I

wanted my students to know the Design Process, so that when we did get to transition back to a

normal schedule, the PLTW lessons would go more smoothly. My main goal was to ensure that

the students were engaged and fully understood the Engineering Design Process so they could

use it to problem solve in any situation presented to them in STEM class. My past students loved

Kahoot. It kept them engaged and I felt like students were more confident and scored higher on

assessments.
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My specific research question that I conducted and answered is: Does playing Kahoot

for review help to reinforce the skills that have been taught to create more knowledge on

any given topic in STEM?

To conduct my research, I used one 1st grade class of 16 students. I broke them into two

groups A Day and B Day students. With the A Day students, I used Kahoot to reinforce the skills

that we were learning in class. With the B Day students, I did traditional lecturing/ teaching and

activities that used the Design Process.

Review of Literature:

To begin my study, I read and researched multiple articles that aligned best with my

research question. All the articles did case studies to compare either students’ engagement,

motivation, anxiety/confidence level, and/or overall performance in understanding the topic by

using Kahoot as a review tool.

The first article reviewed was a study conducted on some graduate students to determine

if students found Kahoot to be interesting and/or challenging. It was also done to see if Kahoot

would improve students’ performance in the overall class due to using it as a review tool.

This study was done on 96 undergraduates in a business class for 7 weeks. They divided

the class into groups to do this study. One group used Kahoot and the remainder of the students

did not use Kahoot to review. Bawa (2019) noted that students were inspired and motivated by

using Kahoot. Their scores were higher on their final exams than the students that didn’t use

Kahoot.

Originally, I was going to do a 1st and 2nd grade class to conduct my study, but after

reading this article, I decided that the my research would be more accurate if it were done on
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groups of students that had the same amount of background knowledge from the previous school

year. If the study was done using two different grade levels, the second graders would have more

knowledge of the Design Process than the first graders which would probably affect their overall

performance. In this study, I really wanted to observe how using Kahoot to review the Design

Process would affect their overall performance. This study supported my theory that students that

used Kahoot as a review would be more engaged, but also perform better on assessments.

The next article reviewed was a study conducted to see the impact of game-based vs non-

game-based online student response systems. The focus of the study was on students’ anxiety

levels, engagement, and performance when using a game-based and non- game-based online

student response system. Turan and Meral (2018) noted that the students that used the game-

based student response system were more engaged and had less test anxiety than students that

students used non-game-based student response systems. They also had a higher performance

level on their tests. This article supported my theory that students would not only perform higher

than students that didn’t use Kahoot, but it also supported my theory that they would be more

confident taking the assessments.

Next, I reviewed an article that conducted a study on three different groups of students.

The study focused on the effectiveness of educational online quizzes in students with multiple

players. Students who participated in multi-player online quizzes were motivated to study in

order to perform well during the multi-player quizzes. Fu-Hsing Tsai (2016) noted that students

who are competing during online quiz games are more engaged, motivated, less stressed, and

perform better on tests and quizzes. This study supported my theory as well, because it

concluded that students that completed any type of multi-player games were more engaged,

motivated, and performed better on assessments. It also stated that the students wanted to study
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so that they could perform well during the multi-player quiz. I love that it would give them an

incentive to look over the information during the 4 weeks that they do not attend STEM.

The fourth article I reviewed was based on 27 high school students (13 juniors and 14

seniors). The study was done in a span of seven 30-minute lectures. Owen and Licorish (2020)

noted that playing Kahoot was helpful in students retaining the information that they were

taught. However, the juniors felt that the content was limited and shallow. They also noted that

although Kahoot was helpful in students retaining information, it should not be replaced by

traditional lectures/teaching. This article related to my study, because it focused on using a

Kahoot as a way for students to retain information, which was my main focus. I also wanted to

keep traditional lectures in place, along with the engaging quizzes.

The fifth and final article reviewed conducted a study with college students. It was

conducted to assess whether Kahoot increases students’ knowledge, engagement, and

performance on tests. The study compared a class that only did traditional lectures and a class

that incorporated Kahoot with traditional lectures. Kahoot can be used as a review of a previous

lesson and to grab the students’ attention. Baszuk and Heath concluded that Kahoot did increase

students’ engagement, knowledge retention, and performances on tests. This article also supports

my theory that students that use Kahoot are more engaged, retain information, and perform better

on assessments than students that just receive traditional lectures.

Methodology:

To conduct this research, I used one 1st grade class of 15 students that was broken into

two groups (A Day and B Day). On A Day 7 students attended and on B Day 8 students

attended. This class did not have any G Day students. My A Day students received both
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traditional instruction and played Kahoot for extra review. My B Day students only received

traditional instruction.

To collect my quantitative data, each group were both given a pre-test and a post-test to

test their knowledge of the Engineering Design Process at the beginning and ending of the 15-

week period. One group used Kahoot as a review tool and the other group only got traditional

direct instruction and the activities that used the Design Process.

Throughout the 15-week period, one group played Kahoot weekly to review the

Engineering Design Process. It was done at the beginning or ending of class, depending on the

lesson. When playing Kahoot, the students’ responses appear on the board in real time. When I

noticed a lot of students getting problems wrong, I used that time as teachable moments.

During this time, I collected my qualitative data through observations, class discussions,

and using the data that was collected through Kahoot. Kahoot breaks down each question and it

informed me of how many and which students got an answer correct, incorrect, or didn’t answer

at all. It also lets me know which questions are the hardest for my students. It gives an overall

percentage of how well the students did individually and as a whole group.

I also made sure that there were always fun activities and videos posted on their Seesaw,

so that if they wanted extra practice for the days that they were not physically in school to

prepare for the Kahoot quizzes, they had them available.

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Analysis:

I began my analysis by comparing the scores from the pre-test and pos-test assessments

of my students, both A and B Day, from September to December. This first data analysis helps

me to see the overall growth of my students from September to December.

A Day

B Day

Student Pre-test Post-test

Student A 0% 70%

Student B 30% 80%

Student C 20% 80%

Student D 0% 60%

Student E 0% 100%

Student F 10% 90%

Student G 0% 80%

Student H 20% 60%

Student I 0% 60%

Student J 10% 70%

Student K 0% 50%

Student L 0% 50%

Student M 20% 60%

Student N 0% 40%
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Student O 10% 80%

This analysis shows that all students started the year not knowing much about the

Engineering Design Process. By the end, both groups of students had great growth. The students

had only seen me 3 weeks (2 days each of those weeks) out of the 15-week span of time, As seen

in the chart, the students that did receive Kahoot as a review tool, did score a little better than the

students that did not receive the Kahoot review.

I also analyzed the data from Kahoot each week to see how students were performing on

the quizzes as a class. Each week I observed that the students scored a little better each time. The

quizzes consisted of the questions that were on the pre-test and post-test assessments.

Week 1:
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Week 2:
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Week 3:
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I created a quick poll to see how many students used the tools on Seesaw that were

available to them. The results are on the charts below. I wanted to see if the scores from their

pre-test and post-test assessments were also based on the extra studying tools that were available

to them. From the results below, I can conclude that the scores were not based on those extra

activities, because only three students used those tools.

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I also wanted to make sure that the students were having fun and they were engaged.

Kahoot does let me see the engagement of my students, but I also created a poll for my students

to let me know how much they enjoyed participating in Kahoot, along with my observations

while playing Kahoot. The results reflected just what I knew it would. All students think that

Kahoot is fun and a good way to help them review.

Is Kahoot a fun and good way to review? (A and B Day

students)

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Yes No

Findings:

After doing my investigation and analyzing my qualitative and quantitative data, I found

that overall my hypothesis was accurate. Playing Kahoot for review help to reinforce the skills

that they had been taught to create more knowledge on the topics they are learning in STEM.
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Students were more engaged, confident, and performed better than students that did not use

Kahoot.

Although all of my students had growth during this 15-week period, the students that

engaged with Kahoot along with direct instruction performed higher than those that did not use

Kahoot. Due to this data, I have decided to use Kahoot regularly when we go back to our normal

schedule of seeing students once a week every week. All students were engaged and excited

whenever I pulled the Kahoot screen up on the board. It is very important to me as an educator to

not only make sure that my students are engaged, but to also make sure that they are retaining the

information. I agree with the findings from Owen and Licorish (2020) which concluded that

although students thought Kahoot was helpful in students retaining information, it should not be

replaced by traditional lectures/teaching. They felt that playing Kahoot by itself would be limited

and shallow. Even though students show growth and retain information, I will never replace the

it with just using Kahoot and not teaching the content traditionally.

Students did not want to study outside of class time, as I only had three of the fifteen

students to access the extra activities on Seesaw. This did not reflect the findings from Fu-Hsing

Tsai (2016), which said that because students were competitive and wanted to perform well on

Kahoot, they spent extra time studying to perform better. I feel like that may also have something

to do with the age group of my students and the way their days for school or set up. The article

was based on high school students. Most first graders will not just take their extra time away

after school to study for school. STEM is also a special area. Their days at home were already

filled with work to complete for their general education teacher.

This leads to my question that I would like to inquire some more would be to have

general education teachers use Kahoot and do a similar study. I want to know whether their
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students would be more willing to study outside of school time in order to perform better on

Kahoot for their homeroom class. Sometimes I feel that students do more for their homeroom

class than they would for a special area class. I would be interested to see the outcome.
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References

Baszuk, P.A., & Heath, M.L. (2020). Using Kahoot! to Increase Exam Scores and Engagement.

Journal of Education for Business, 95(8), 548-552.

Bawa, P. (2019). Using Kahoot to Inspire. Journal of Educaitonal Technology Systems, 47(3),

373-390.

Fu-Hsing Tsai. (2016). The Effectiveness Evaluation among Different Player-Matching

Mechanisms in a Multi-Player Quiz Game. Journal of Educational Technology &

Society, 19(4), 213-224.

Owen, H. E., & Licorish, S. A. (2020). Game-Based Student Response System: The Effectiveness

Of Kahoot! On Junior and Senior Information Science Students’ Learning. Journal of

Information Technology Education, 19, 511-553.

Turan, Z., & Meral, E. (2018). Game-Based versus to Non-Game-Based: The Impact of Student

Response Systems on Students’ Achievements, Engagements and Test Anxieties.

Informatics in Education, 17(1), 105-116.