Investigation of Elementary Education Students ’ Attitudes towards the Use of Smart Boards

The purpose of this research is to investigate the attitudes of elementary education students towards the use of Smart Board (SB) in lessons. The study is based on the associational survey model from quantitative research methods. The study was conducted on students attending at 4th to 8th grades of three schools, both primary and secondary stages, in Malatya province during 2016-2017 academic year. “Smart board attitude scale-SBAS” by Şad (2012) composed of 10 items and 5-point Likert scale was used in order to collect data. The result of the study revealed that elementary education students have a positive attitude on smart board usage in general. There was no significant difference in terms of gender while there was a significant difference in terms of the number of students in the classes, school type and grade.


Introduction
Countries form various systems to maintain their presence in accordance with the political regime they adopt.Educational systems undertake the mission of getting individuals to gain the knowledge and skills the era required them to have.That knowledge and skills are conveyed through programs at schools that emerged at the end of the process of education being institutionalized.The importance of the usage of various methods and techniques and materials during the implementation of the program is often stated in the educational surroundings.For the methods and techniques to be supported by appropriate materials, those materials should be sufficient in terms of quantity and qualification.During the education-training process, traditional materials used in the past are replaced by modern ones by the advanced technology.Those materials are increasing day by day in terms of number and function.Kenar (2012) states this truth that technological products which are the easiest way of accessing knowledge have begun to be used frequently at schools.Today, computers, projectors, smart boards (SBs), various hardware and software are the prominent examples of those products.Smart board is a tool which is used frequently in the classroom because it works multi-directionally.
Smart boards have begun to be used in education at the end of the 1990s (Beeland, 2002).Schools are equipped with smart boards as part of FATİH (Movement of Enhancing Opportunities and Improving Technology) project started in 2010, in Turkey.Although they are often referred to as interactive white boards, electronic white boards, or smart boards, their forms of usage is similar (Erduran & Tataroglu, 2009;Türel & Demirli, 2010).Smart board is appropriate for being computer-projector link as well as being touch-oper-ated.When the literature is examined, it is seen that smart boards are tools that support learning-teaching process (Adıgüzel, Gürbulak & Sarıçayır, 2011;Çelik & Atak, 2012;Geer & Barnes, 2007;Kennewell & Beauchamp, 2007).
According to the literature, the contribution of SBs to the learning-teaching process can be handled in two dimensions (Şad, 2012).First, the contribution to instructional excellence; second is the contribution to learning process.According to the findings obtained from various studies, SBs can make teaching more effective by being suitable for usage of three major senses i.e. seeing, hearing, and touching (Beeland, 2002;Hall & Higgins, 2005;Gündoğdu, 2014); as its rich visual presentation tools, teachers' use of photos, flash animations, videos (Ates, 2010), voice records and sound effects (Hall & Higgins, 2005) and also because of the interactivity of the screen , teachers and students' interference to the drawings, writings on the board (Erduran & Tataroğlu, 2009).SBs contribute to the learning by increasing motivation (Smith, Higgins, Wall & Miller, 2005;Türel & Demirli, 2010); providing students' active participation (Beeland, 2002;Elaziz, 2008); taking attention (Levy, 2002;Morgan, 2008); and considering individual differences (Beeland, 2002;Gündoğdu, 2014).Besides these contributions, the use of SBs have also limitations.Some of these limitations are necessitating hardware and software for working with computer technology; not being used in every lesson; being expensive, and lack of information and skills of teachers related to the use of SBs (Higgins, Beauchamp & Miller, 2007) and not being suitable to use with every teaching method.
SBs' contributions and limitations above can create various experiences and impressions in students.Students also obtain different affective behaviors by SBs in the teaching pro-cess besides they get knowledge and skills.One of these affective behaviors is attitude.Generally, attitude means the individual's view to a person or an object.According to Smith (1968), attitude means a tendency which attributes to the individual and forms his/her thought, emotion and behaviors related to a psychological object in a proper way (as cited in Kağıtçıbaşı, 2008, p. 110).According to this definition, attitude provides consistency in the individual's emotion, thought and behaviors towards an object.
Students' attitudes towards SBs as a technological product form the accumulation which they obtain from it.Each student's attitude towards SBs can be at different levels.This difference can stem from students' personal properties, exposure time, and exposure place and exposure conditions of SBs.That's why at every educational stage (elementary education, secondary education, higher education) or lessons in which they are used, students' level of attitudes towards SBs and the factors they are influenced by can be dealt with.However, this research emerged from the need to investigate the attitudes of elementary education students towards the use of SBs.

Purpose
The purpose of this research is to investigate elementary education students' attitudes towards the use of Smart Board in terms of several variables.In order to reach this purpose, answers of the following questions were looked for: 1. How are the elementary education students' attitudes towards the use of smart board in general? 2. Is there a significant difference between their attitudes towards smart board usage in terms of their gender, the number of students in the class, school type, and grade?

Method
In this study, the associational survey model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used.Survey model is an approach that determine a situation in the past or existing now as the way it is.Furthermore, it includes data gathering to examine various features of a group.The event, person or object that is the topic of research is tried to be defined as the way it is and in its own circumstances.There is no effort to change or affect it in any way (Büyüköztürk, Çakmak, Akgün, Karadeniz & Demirel, 2012;Karasar, 2011).

The study group
The participants of the study included the 4th-8th grades attending three schools which have SBs used in their classes, with both primary and secondary stages, located in Malatya province, Turkey.These three schools are qualified as higher, middle and lower socioeconomic status (SES) respectively as shown in Table 1.A total of 569 students were selected randomly from each grade of these three schools.Demographics about participants are presented in Table 1.

Data collection tool
To collect data, 5-point (Strongly agree, agree, slightly agree, disagree, strongly disagree) Likert type "Smart Board Attitude Scale" developed by Şad (2012) for 4th-8th grade students was used.The scale is composed of two factors.The factor loadings of items (1, 4, 7, 8 and 9.) in the first factor that includes negative attitude statements about smart board usage are between .821 and .680.The items' factor loadings (2, 3, 5, 6 and 10.) in the second factor that includes positive attitude statements are between .826 and .682.The scale explains 60.457% of the total variance.Cronbach's Alpha on reliability of the scale is α = .816for the first factor and α= .821for the second factor.In this study, internal consistency coefficient of the scale in general was calculated as α= .836because if students' attitude differs or not in terms of several variables was determined according to total scores.This value shows this scale is reliable for this study as well.

Data collection and analysis
Before the data collection, students were informed about the aim of the study.Then, Smart Board Attitude Scale- Data obtained from the study was analyzed through statistical package program on computer.On students' attitudes towards smart board usage, for the options in the scale, for the positive ones from 5 to 1, for the negative ones from 1 to 5 reversely were given.Each student's total score was calculated this way.Total scores changed between 10 and 50.
Frequency and percentage values of students' answers given to the items were calculated and shown in the table.Moreover, arithmetical mean of total scores obtained from the scale was calculated.How the attitudes of the students towards smart board usage is in general was tried to be determined in this way.For the analysis used to determine if there is significant difference between students' attitudes about smart board usage in terms of their gender, number of students in class, school type and grade, non-parametric statistics (Kruskal Wallis-H and Mann Whitney U) was used because there is no normality for the scores (Büyüköztürk, 2012).Significance degree (p) was set to .05.

Findings
Under this heading, findings of the study are given respectively according to sub-problems.

Findings related to first sub-problem
The findings about how the attitudes of the students towards smart board usage in general is are given in table 2.
As can be seen in Table 2, elementary education students' answers to the positive items (2, 3, 5, 6 and 10) of the scale were mostly "strongly agree" and "agree".On the other hand, their answers to the negative items (1, 4, 7, 8 and 9) were "strongly disagree" or "disagree".It can be said that elementary education students' attitudes towards the use of smart board is positive in general.Furthermore, as can be seen in table 2 the fact that the arithmetical mean of students' total attitude scores is 40.65 considering the highest score is 50, supports this comment.

Findings related to second sub-problem
Findings about if there is a significant difference between students' attitude towards the use of smart board in terms of their gender, the number of students in the class, school type and grade are given in table 3, 4, 5 and 6.
As can be seen at table 3, no significant difference (U= 39399.50,p>.05) was found between students' attitude scores towards smart board usage in terms of gender.This finding can be interpreted as students' attitudes towards smart board usage is similar.
As can be seen at table 4, there was a significant difference (U= 23485; p< .05) between students' attitude scores towards smart board usage in terms of the number of students in the class.The mean rank of attitude scores of the students in the classes that has 16-25 students is more than the ones which has 26-35 students.This finding can be interpreted as the classes having less students may cause positive attitude about smart board usage.In other words, less crowded classes may cause positive attitudes because it raises interaction with the smart board.
As can be seen at table 5 there was a significant difference (X2=38.24;p< .05) between students' attitude scores about * The item that includes negative attitude smart board usage in terms of the school type.According to the MWU analysis done to determine between which school types the difference is, the mean rank of total attitude scores of the students in school with the higher socio-economic status is higher than mean ranks of the students in other schools.Furthermore, the mean rank of total attitude scores of the students in the school with the middle socio-economic status is higher than the mean rank of the students in the school with lower socio-economic status.This finding can be interpreted as students' studying at a school in which socio-economic status is higher might cause positive attitude about smart board usage in lessons.
As can be seen at table 6, there was a significant difference (X 2 =38.24; p< .05) between students' attitude scores in terms of students' grades.According to the MWU analysis done to determine between which grades the difference is in, the mean rank of attitude scores of the students in 5th, 6 th and 7 th grade is higher than the ones' in 8 th grade.This finding can be interpreted as the students in lower grades have more positive attitude towards smart board usage than 8 th grade students.

Conclusion and Discussion
Providing students with knowledge and skills in education-training processes is possible by setting various factors to function systematically.One of these factors is teaching materials and equipment.Today the materials compatible with digital technology have replaced the simple-structured materials used in the past.One of these technologies, the smart boards (SBs), though called with different names, are becoming widespread day by day (Erduran & Tataroğlu, 2009;Lan & Hsiao, 2011).No matter at which educational stage SBs are used, they contribute to education-training processes.Some of the benefits of the SBs include teacher-student interaction, supporting creative thinking, effective use of visual presentation materials, providing motivation and considering individual differences.
Besides these contributions of SBs, they have limitations like failure to be used in every lesson and with every teaching method according to the conditions of use.These limitations and contributions can cause differ- In this research, it was concluded that elementary education students generally have positive attitudes towards the use of SBs.In the relevant literature, although some are at the secondary education stage, there are also some studies which reached the same conclusion (Akgün & Koru Yücekaya, 2015;Çalışkan & Altundaş, 2016;Demircioğlu & Demircioğlu, 2015;Özgen & Tum, 2018;Smith, Higgins, Wall & Miller, 2005) Additionally, Sünkür, Arabacı and Şanlı (2011) reached the conclusion that students enjoyed using SBs and so, suggesting that students have positive attitudes.On the contrary, in a study related to the use of SBs in Math lesson (Gündüz & Çelik, 2015) it was seen that students have negative attitude.According to this conclusion, students' attitudes towards SBs can be at different levels due to varying factors but in general studies show that it is important that students have positive attitude.That can be evaluated as a reflection of the functions provided by the SBs to students during the lessons.Additionally, students' interests and positive attitudes towards SBs will contribute to use these materials more effectively.Another conclusion drawn from this research is that primary education students' attitudes towards the use of SBs do not differ according to gender.
On the other hand, in two studies (Kaya & Aydın, 2011;Özgen & Tum, 2018) it was found that there is a difference in attitudes towards SBs according to gender.In this research and in most of the other researches reviewed, no significant difference was found in terms of gender, which suggests that gender is not an effective variable in students' attitudes towards SBs.However, presence or lack of difference in students' attitudes towards SBs according to gender is up to their interaction conditions with this instructional technology.
According to the analysis on the number of students in the class, it is found that there is a significant difference between students' attitudes towards the use of SBs.In the classes with fewer students (16-25 people), students have higher positive attitude scores.Having fewer students in a class is important in terms of enhancing the time of interaction with SBs.This can cause positive attitudes.Although this conclusion obtained from the research suggests that the number of students in the class is an important factor about attitudes towards SBs, no researches have been encountered in the literature which investigates SBs' effects on students' attitudes according to the number of students in the class.
According to the school type, there is a significant difference between students' attitudes towards the use of SBs.Because students' attitude scores towards SBs enhanced, as the socio-economic status of schools increased.The socio-economic status of primary and secondary schools which students attend cause difference in students' attitudes towards SBs in this study.Although this conclusion obtained from the research show that school type is an important factor about attitudes towards SBs, no researches have been encountered in the literature which investigates SBs' effects on students' attitudes according to school types.
A significant difference was found between students' attitudes towards the use of SBs according to grades (4 th -8 th ).In addition to studies which have similar conclusions (Çalışkan & Altundaş, 2016;Demircioğlu & Demircioğlu, 2015;Günbatar & Gökçearslan, 2017;Korucu, Usta & Toraman, 2016;Özgen & Tum, 2018), there is also a study which found no difference in students' attitudes towards SBs.In one of the studies (Çalışkan & Altundaş, 2016) in which there is a difference in attitudes towards SBs according to grades, while attitude score means/ positive attitudes decreased towards the lower classes; in others, they decreased towards the upper classes.These conclusions are important in terms of attitudes towards SBs.Because the presence or lack of difference between students' attitudes towards SBs according to grades and positive attitudes' decreasing towards lower or upper classes prompts the researchers to investigate how SBs are used.
Furthermore, there are some studies that show using smart board in lessons affect not only attitude but also affective, cognitive (interest, success, enjoying learning etc.) qualities in a positive way (Davidovitch & Yavich, 2017;Digregorio & Sobel-Lojeski, 2010;Francis, 2017;Luo & Yang, 2016;Nejem & Muhanna, 2014;Torff & Tirotta, 2010).Those studies revealed that technological materials including smart boards would be useful when they are actively used in education.
According to the conclusions obtained from the research, if it is considered that SBs are becoming widespread in learning-teaching processes day by day, it is suggested that both quantitative and qualitative researches are conducted to investigate how SBs are used.As the number of students is an effective factor on students' attitudes towards SBs, classrooms can be organized so as to include 20-24 people.Additionally, investigate how such affective variables such as interest; motivation etc. affect learners' attitudes towards SBs can also.These suggestions were generally done based on the findings of the research.However, usage of smart boards can change according to education systems.Therefore, the place of the smart boards in educational processes can be handled more comprehensively through researches both in Turkey and abroad.

Table 1 .
Demographics related to participants

Table 2 .
The distribution of students' attitudes towards smart board usage and statistics on total scores from the scale

Table 3 .
The MWU results of students' attitude scores about smart board usage in terms of gender

Table 4 .
The MWU results of students' attitude scores about smart board usage in terms of the number of student in the class

Table 5 .
The Kruskal Wallis-H results of students' attitude scores about smart board usage in terms of school type they study

Table 6 .
The Kruskal Wallis-H results of students' attitude scores about smart board usage in terms of their grades ent views, interests and attitudes regarding SBs among teachers and students.In this study, elementary education students' (4 th -8 th grades) attitudes towards the use of SBs in classroom are investigated.