Improving students ’ academic performance – there’s an app for that

This is a SpringerOpen blog post At a time when students’ demand for personalized education is growing, mobile apps could allow students to engage with course material whenever and wherever they choose. Taking advantage of mobile app technologies in this way could help lecturers reach out to their students and keep them interested in the course content, leading to improved outcomes. Mobile apps and student engagement Mobile apps are not uncommon in higher education. A nation-wide recent study into universities’ use of mobile apps found that in 2016 there were 177 Android apps affiliated with Australian universities, averaging at five apps per institution. However, only 20 of these apps were instructional apps, that is, those specifically used for the purposes of teaching and learning. Evidence-based research indicates that engaged students demonstrate higher rates of retention and are less likely to drop out. We took a quantitative approach to find out how students interacted with a specially-designed mobile learning app and to see whether app engagement correlated with students’ outcomes in the unit. Drawing on the pedagogy of Testing Effect and Spacing Effect, the app was to prompt students to test their knowledge of the concepts introduced during a course by delivering quizzes directly to the students’ mobile devices at strategic times during the learning process. Push notifications alerted students each time a new quiz became available. 394 students volunteered ...
Source: BioMed Central Blog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Technology App education SpringerOpen Source Type: blogs