Canberra, Aug 4: Researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have developed a mobile learning app to boost the academic performance of the students. An app that uses game elements such as leaderboards and digital badges might prove to have a positive impact on students’ academic performance, engagement, and retention, according to a study. The study showed that when the app was first introduced in 2015, the score of students improved by over 12 per cent compared to the students in the previous semester.
The app will allow lecturers to push quizzes based on course content directly to their students’ devices. It is being done to motivate them, increase their competitiveness, and keep them engaged with the course through the quizzes.
After testing the app, the researchers found that there was a correlation between a good performance on app tasks and achieving higher academic grades. After testing the app, the researchers found that the students who had tried the app scored 7.03 per cent higher as compared to students who chose not to use the app, researchers said.
THE APP TO BOOST ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
- The app delivers questions directly to students on their devices.
- Push notifications alert students each time a new quiz becomes available.
- Various data – the speed of the students, the number of attempts it took them to get correct answers – is collected through the app engagement.
- For each correct answer, students were assigned points which were collected in a leaderboard.
“Evidence-based research into student engagement tells us that well-engaged students are less likely to drop out,” said Ekaterina Pechenkina, corresponding author of the study. “Our results imply that students are willing to use learning apps and that performing highly on the app may predict their future academic success,” Pechenkina said. “We developed our app to achieve multiple goals, including improving engagement and measuring academic performance,” she added.
“In order to do that, we designed the app to include multiple-choice quizzes, push notifications, digital leaderboards and badges,” she said.
