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Still looking for new ways to play and learn… Expert perspectives and expectations for interactive toys

Hall, Lynne, Paracha, Samiullah, Flint, Tom, MacFarlane, Kate, Stewart, Fiona, Hagan-Green, Gillian and Watson, Derek (2021) Still looking for new ways to play and learn… Expert perspectives and expectations for interactive toys. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction. p. 100361. ISSN 2212-8689

Item Type: Article

Abstract

The use of interactive, smart and connected toys is expected to increase rapidly with many claiming not only new ways to play, but also to have educational benefits. However, there is a lack of evidence to support such claims and the purpose of the current analysis was to gather expert opinion about interactive toys for play and learning. In-depth interviews with 15 experts from technology corporates, stakeholder organizations and academia using a semi-structured interview protocol were conducted. The audio transcripts were coded using a Template Analysis approach with the key themes being educational utility, learning, play, and children with disabilities. The text visualization revealed that experts perceived high educational effectiveness of interactive toys. Apart from the educational value, experts also spoke about the benefits of interactive toys in entertaining the children of busy parents, privacy, security and integrative features of smart toys. This study demonstrates that for experts’ interactive toys have higher perceived educational value than traditional toys or other forms of play although this is an intuition or an insight rather than based on direct evidence to support this view. From the analysis and interpretation, we identified three main recommendations 1) the need for interactive toys to provide a safe, secure and private way to play and learn; 2) increased research, experimentation and investigation to explore interactive toy claims and potential; and 3) increased interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration and innovation.

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More Information

Depositing User: Leah Maughan

Identifiers

Item ID: 13778
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.100361
ISSN: 2212-8689
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/13778
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.100361

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Lynne Hall: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5090-1980
ORCID for Samiullah Paracha: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8002-7101
ORCID for Kate MacFarlane: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-0271-3314
ORCID for Derek Watson: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1944-3544

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 28 Jul 2021 07:26
Last Modified: 24 Jul 2022 02:38

Contributors

Author: Lynne Hall ORCID iD
Author: Samiullah Paracha ORCID iD
Author: Kate MacFarlane ORCID iD
Author: Derek Watson ORCID iD
Author: Tom Flint
Author: Fiona Stewart
Author: Gillian Hagan-Green

University Divisions

Faculty of Business, Law and Tourism > Sunderland Business School
Faculty of Technology > School of Computer Science

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