Textbooks and Digital Learning Platforms: A Comparative Analysis of Tasks Regarding Cognitive Activation and Visualizations

Abstract

In the course of progressive digitization, learning platforms are increasingly finding their way into everyday school teaching and represent—also according to their own claim—an alternative to textbooks. The present study investigates the cognitive activation potential of tasks and the type of visualizations used in tasks in textbooks and on digital mathematics learning platforms at the lower secondary level. For this purpose, a total of 811 tasks from three textbooks and 224 tasks from three learning platforms from the content areas “Multiplication of fractions” and “Pythagorean Theorem” were examined using a differentiated category system. Regarding the cognitive activation potential, both textbooks and learning platforms offer a large proportion of tasks that have a low cognitive activation potential with textbooks tending to provide a stronger cognitive activation potential. In particular, learning platforms often do not provide tasks with high cognitive activation potential. Regarding visualizations, both textbooks and learning platforms tend to use fully mathematized visualizations for tasks. This reduces opportunities for learners to create their own visualizations. Furthermore, it is surprising that, despite the technical possibilities, mathematics learning platforms do rarely use potentially learning-enhancing, multiple, dynamic, and interactive representations. Based on the results of the study, consequences for research and development are discussed.