An İnvestigation of Interactive Whiteboard Use

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) contribute significantly to educational environments and facilitate the education of students who are prone to visual, auditory and touch learning. IWBs provide more resources and various course materials than traditional classroom environments. Interactive applications such as interactive videos, educational games and simulations can easily be used in classroom settings with IWBs. Another advantage of IWBs is the large screen which can easily be seen by all students. In traditional classroom environments, projections also provide large screens, however, IWBs overcome some of the shortcomings of projections. The comparison of projections and IWBs indicates that the interactive screen of the latter, which can be used without having to make the classroom environment dimly lit, draws students’ attention and makes the IWB user-friendly with clearer and more readable images. Having all these positive features, IWBs enhance students’ engagement in class activities and positively affect their learning, which are the two basic goals of education. Unfortunately, IWBs are not used as often as desired despite the many advantages they have. At this point, insufficient use of IWBs poses a problem. We think that IWB use can be enhanced by determining the factors playing a role in its use. To this end, this study investigated the effect of user, course and classroom setting on IWB use. A survey was carried out on a total of 416 students from three different high schools. Mann Whitney U Test, Kruskal-Wallis H Test and Friedman Test were applied to the data using SPSS. The results of the analysis indicate that IWB use significantly differs depending on user (teacher and student), course (physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics) and grade, and that students use IWBs much less than teachers. It is recommended that teachers encourage students to use IWBs and that cooperation-enhancing activities be carried out through teacher-to-teacher interactions.