Eastern Student Andrew Rubasch Participates in Renowned TIMPANI Toy Study

2016 Dec 13

The Center for Early Childhood Education (CECE) at Eastern Connecticut State University announced on Dec. 12 that "Plus-Plus," a toy made by the Danish company Plus-Plus, has been named the 2016 TIMPANI (Toys that Inspire Mindful Play and Nurture Imagination) Toy. The annual study, which is now in its eighth year, investigates how young children play with a variety of toys in natural settings.

Andrew Rubasch '17 of East Setauket, who majors in Communication, was among the student participants in the study.

This year, 10 toys were selected for the study by teachers, faculty and student researchers. The toys were placed in preschool classrooms in Eastern's Child and Family Development Resource Center, and student researchers used hidden cameras to videotape children playing with the toys. Researchers then coded the footage according to the study's evaluation rubric, which includes four subscales: thinking and learning, cooperation and social interaction, creativity and imagination, and verbalization.

"My role was to edit the film," said Rubasch. "I would go into the classrooms and record footage of the children playing with the toys, then go into the editing lab and piece together the film for the study."

Plus-Plus (Midi size) received the highest overall score in this year's study. It also scored the highest in the "thinking and learning" and "creativity and imagination" subscales. In addition, the toy scored very highly with both boys and girls and with children from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

"We would incorporate both types of footage to have multiple different angles," said Rubasch, explaining that in addition to his footage, the classrooms of the CECE are equipped with several cameras to observe unadulterated play.

Professor Jeffrey Trawick-Smith, principal investigator of the study and Phyllis Waite Endowed Chair of Early Childhood Education, noted, "Plus-Plus is a construction toy, and we've found from previous research that construction toys do very well on our evaluation rubric. As children are building with these toys, they're creating designs; they're testing out their designs; they're re-building their structures. So if you think about it, construction toys like Plus-Plus are really simple engineering tools for very young children." Plus-Plus is the fourth construction toy to be named the TIMPANI toy of the year since the study began in 2010.

"In this internship, I worked a lot with Avid (industry-standard video editing software) and became much more comfortable with the program," said Rubasch. "The experience was awesome. Everything I've learned this semester, particularly with Avid, is just great." Before this internship, Rubasch has worked with the athletics department to create video highlights of sporting events, "but this was the first research-study video I've done."

"The TIMPANI study is ground-breaking, empirical and thought-provoking, and has garnered international attention since we started it eight years ago," said Eastern President Elsa Nunez. "Eastern faculty and students are providing research-based guidance to preschool teachers, parents and others on toys that promote children's intellectual growth, social interaction and creativity. In the process, our early childhood education students are learning to conduct empirical research of the highest quality."

To view the video of the 2016 study, visit www.easternct.edu/cece/timpani/. For more information, contact the CECE at (860) 465-0687 or visit the website.