ANALYSIS OF SELF-REGULATED LEARNING APPLICATIONS BASED ON VISUAL APPEARANCE AND FREQUENCY OF USE

The choice of the appropriate visual design for each mobile application has a significant impact on the perception of information. This is also of the utmost importance when acquiring or communicating educational content. In the field of e-learning, there is an increasing number of mobile applications that enable efficient teaching and learning. Our study analyses different applications for e-learning that are frequently used by Slovenian high school students. Based on a literature review, an introduction to the field of application design is given and criteria that influence the selection of appropriate graphical elements when creating an application in general are presented. With the survey, we compared the five most widely used applications for self-directed learning on the basis of their visual design. Our aim was to collect data on the effectiveness of the graphic elements that influence the choice of an application and to identify students’ habits in terms of self-regulated learning (type of tool used, learning time, learning circumstances). In addition, the learning habits of students from a suburb were compared with students who live in the city. Based on the data collected, we provide guidelines for selecting the most appropriate graphic elements for designing an effective application as a learning and teaching tool. The research showed differences in the use of applications for learning or entertainment depending on the type of school the students attend (vocational, secondary school and high school students). The study also determined how much time per day students use digital tools for learning or entertainment and, more importantly, which media. Another important finding was that students still mainly rely on traditional learning methods, i.e. textbooks and notebooks, to complete their homework for school. Differences in the popularity of applications between suburban and urban students were found in only two of the five applications analysed.