A/B Testing Protocol for Digital Educational Resources

Digital Educational Resources can make full of the current capabilities of digital media to create engaging and highly interactive resources suitable for both classroom instruction and independent learning. Incorporating gamification and narratives can further enhance contextualization by providing direction, scenarios, stories, characters, and other playful elements that motivate students to engage positively with the learning process. A public central service has undertaken the challenge of developing such resources to enhance the quality of education across all basic education levels. However, currently, there are no best practices nor previous attempts at similar or approximate Digital Educational Resources and therefore the need for the creation of a simple and effective method of testing individual and comparative versions (A/B Testing) of user interface and user experience-related elements. Testing was conducted in nine classrooms over three school years within a single school, yielding positive results both in the elements assessed and in the viability of the testing procedure itself. The success of this approach suggests its potential for replication in other elements to be developed in the Digital Educational Resource.