The Effect of immediate feedback and difficulty level on learning and engagement in a Spanish learning mobile application

Abstract

Smartphones are ubiquitous and frequently used as learning tools, which makes the design of educational apps an important area of research. A key issue is designing apps to encourage engagement while maintaining focus on the educational aspects of the app. Two design features that may encourage both engagement and learning are immediate feedback and difficulty level. Evidence is presented linking the two design features to the two outcomes both directly and with Flow experience as a mediator. This study investigates the effects of difficulty and immediate feedback on engagement and learning performance in the context of a Spanish learning app. An app has been developed which teaches Spanish phrases. Two experiments have been conducted. The first experiment was a laboratory experiment where the app was used to investigate the effect of immediate feedback as well as the usability of the app. Some evidence was found that immediate feedback elicited higher levels of Flow compared to delayed feedback. The app had an acceptable level of usability. The second experiment released the app on Google Play to investigate the effect of immediate feedback and difficulty level in a real-world scenario. Evidence was found linking difficulty level to both learning and engagement. The evidence for immediate feedback suggested that this effect is weaker than other effects impacting learning and engagement, such as the spacing effect. Implications of these results are discussed.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Simon Kurt Erik Paul Jonsson: orcid.org/0000-0003-4695-2704

ORCID for David Millard: orcid.org/0000-0002-7512-2710

ORCID for Christian Bokhove: orcid.org/0000-0002-4860-8723

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