Discussion of the study

participants, or the participants perceived as having too little knowledge of the lesson plans to give either a negative or positive evaluation. Nevertheless, due to the low number of participants, the results of the quantitative analysis need to be interpreted with caution. However, the open-ended questions provided plenty of qualitative data, through which the participants elaborated on the features they most value, and elements in the service they would like to see refined. Versatility, pleasantness, engagement, and playfulness of the material were praised by many participants, whereas technological malfunctions, age-appropriacy, challenge level, and practicality were features that generated suggestions for improvement.

6.2. Discussion of the study

In this chapter, the research process is discussed. The limitations of the study, statements of data and ethics, as well as suggestions for future studies are presented.

6.2.1. Limitations of the study

There are a few factors that limit the study. First, the questionnaire only received 18 responses. Thus, general conclusions from the quantitative data could not be made, and therefore this research method was unsuccessful in that aspect. Also, as Moomin Language School is a rather new service, it does not yet have an extensive number of long-term users. In addition, the questionnaire was ultimately longer than it needed to be. After the first questionnaires were sent out, the scope of the thesis was narrowed down and thus many questions were disregarded in the analysis. These questions made the questionnaire more time-consuming to fill, which may have affected the response rate of the survey.

Also, when designing the questionnaire, I did not include a question of whether the participant had even used the lesson plans, which further decreased the number of responses to certain questions.

Second, as Moomin Language School has not operated that long, I only had one year’s worth of curriculum and 50 lesson plans to analyze. Moomin Language School’s 4-year-curriculum is only

under development at the moment. This means, that only one part of Moomin Language School could be analyzed and evaluated. Therefore, the evaluation made in this study includes only a part of Moomin Language School and not Moomin Language School as a complete and ready-made 4-year-curriculum.

Also, as the educational background of the participants varied significantly, the evaluations they made about the content of Moomin Language School need to be perceived as reflecting their personal experiences and opinions. For instance, an early childhood educator sees language materials in a different light than, say, an English teacher. The former may focus on age-appropriacy and child-friendly teaching methods, whereas an English teacher might examine the input quality that the material offers. Hence, no general conclusions can be drawn based on the results of the questionnaire, as this study describes how this particular group of people feel about this particular service at this point in time. Also, an electronic questionnaire limits the way people can express their thoughts and ideas on the subject, when compared to an interview, for instance. Indeed, “people's real feelings are hard to grasp in terms of such dichotomies as "agree/disagree," "support/oppose," "like/dislike," etc., these are only approximate indicators of what we have in mind when we create the questions”

(Barribeau et al. 1994-2012). However, questionnaires “tend to be weak on validity and strong on reliability”, which means the survey method used in this study does have an impact on the way the participants have answered the questions, and it needs to be taken into consideration when interpreting the results (Berribeau et al. 1994-2012).

6.2.2. Statements of open data, ethics, and conflict of interest

There are some issues that concern the data, ethics, and the conflict of interest in this study. Currently, I use the Moomin Language School service at my part-time job. This can make me biased and my view subjective regarding the service. As I use it myself regularly, my opinions can influence the analysis of the material. Also, as I am soon graduating to become an English and Spanish teacher, my

views on how a language is learned can impact the way I evaluate and examine language teaching material. The perceptions and attitudes I have towards how a language should be taught can further influence the way I draw conclusions of the results of the analysis.

6.2.3. Suggestions for future studies

During this study, many possible topics for future studies came to my mind. First, as Moomin Language School continues to release more lesson plans and application content, the service could be analyzed as a whole curriculum. The same research questions that I have used could be further utilized and enhanced in future studies to see how the design of the product has progressed. Also, this type of evaluative study could be done on other learning and teaching materials, applications, and services as well.

Before I selected the focus of my study, I considered conducting a questionnaire or an interview for children who use Moomin Language School. However, choosing appropriate interviewing methods for children ages 3 to 8 years seemed challenging, and I feared that children that young would not be able to reflect on the issues I specifically wanted to focus on in the material. However, it would be interesting to interview older children, for instance, 12 to 14-year-olds, who would have used Moomin Language School for a long period of time in their childhood, to find out how they remember the service. What connotations or associations do they make of it, and do they remember anything specific? Is the application memorable? It would also be interesting to find out the children’s English level to see if there are any indications that would suggest that the use of Moomin Language School in early childhood has long-lasting effects on the language skills of children who have used it.