The Impact of Content Design on the Effectiveness of an Educational Application

Abstract

Interactive applications play a significant role in digital educational resources. Their integration has a notable impact, especially in non-formal and informal education. The success of applications depends not only on appropriate content but also on factors that increase users' motivation to use them. These aspects include gamification, activation, personalisation of content and environment, immediate feedback, multimediality or flexibility of application accessibility. The paper focuses on the optimal design of lesson content within an interactive learning application for ISCED 2 students in Mathematics. The paper aims to find relevant aspects and parameters of the application in this context and to identify their appropriate settings for more efficient learning. The study uses quantitative analysis of user behaviour within the application environment, drawing on pedagogical principles such as microlearning, content adaptivity, immediate feedback, and gamification. Lessons are divided into explanation blocks and related practice tasks. As part of the methodology, we evaluate the relationship between the design parameters of these blocks in individual lessons and users' progress through lessons. To assess the optimal setting, we examine the dependence between the overarching mathematical topic, the total amount of content, the number and type of lesson blocks, and tasks. This analysis is based on the theoretical assumption that interactive solving of educational tasks represents the so-called active screen time, which requires the user's direct cognitive involvement. Empirical data for analysis are based on system records of each student's course progress. The key indicators of interaction are analysed, particularly the time spent in individual lessons and blocks of lessons, with their structure taken into account. The synthesis of this objective data allows us to formulate recommendations to optimise educational content that maximise both students' cognitive engagement and the overall effectiveness of the learning process. Also, it helps set an appropriate methodology for further, deeper data analysis.