Mobile application development and use in teacher-family communication and cooperation

The widespread use of mobile devices today has led to the realization of communication and collaboration opportunities between school and family in new and different media. In this context, the development and use of mobile applications in strengthening communication and cooperation between school and family are among the important topics that need to be researched. The purpose of this study is to use a mobile application for teacher-family communication and cooperation, and to determine the opinions of teachers and parents on this. The participants of the study consisted of parents of students studying in Tunceli Central secondary schools and teachers who attended students' lessons in the 2020-2021 academic year. In this study, the problems faced by teachers, students and parents, who are the main stakeholders of the school, in terms of the tools they use in communication and cooperation, especially with the perspectives of mobile application use. In order to determine the expectations of teachers and parents for a new mobile application, the interview form, one of the qualitative observation techniques, was applied to 31 teachers and 21 parents. Expectations such as reliability, speed, ease of use, Turkish language, private conversation, no advertising, and student evaluation were identified in the interview form. Based on these expectations, a mobile teacher-parent communication and collaboration application called MEAChat, suitable for android platforms, was developed with App Inventor mobile application development tool. The software development process continued in accordance with the design-based research method. After the design process, the application was tested by the teachers and parents for a certain period of time and corrections were made in the application structure with user feedback. After the revisions, the second version of MEAChat was actively used for a period of time between teachers and parents. In order to measure the participants' attitudes towards the use of this mobile application, a Likert-type scale called Mobile Application Acceptance Scale was applied to 92 parents and 43 teachers. The scale results applied to compare the attitudes of teachers and parents were analyzed using Independent Groups T Test on the 24th version of the SPSS program. According to the results of the research, it has been determined that the use of mobile applications is widely accepted in supporting and strengthening teacher-parent communication and collaboration and meets the expectations of the participants. No significant difference was found regarding the use of mobile applications in communication and cooperation between teachers and parents. Key Words: School-Family Collaboration, Communication, Mobile Application, Attitude, Technology