What is Learned in an After-School Computer Club?

Abstract

An after-school computer club was developed in which language-minority children learned to master a series of educational computer games through reading instructions, interacting with peers, and interacting with adult mentors. Did twenty-five elementary school children who regularly participated in an after-school computer club during an academic year (treatment group) learn generalizable problem-solving skills as compared to twenty-five non-participating peers who were matched for grade level, gender, and English language proficiency (comparison group)? Based on a dynamic assessment given at the end of the academic year, treatment students were more successful than comparison students in learning how to play a new educational computer game that was presented as a paper-and-pencil mathematics puzzle learning task. This study shows how an informal educational environment can foster generalizable problem-solving skills that transfer to learning in a school environment.