Study Buddy: Mobile Application to Motivate Students to Self-Study

Abstract

"Education is the most important industry in the modern world. However, there is a growing concern regarding, students lack motivation to self-study, especially among high school students. This is due to a variety of reasons ranging from digital distractions to the difficulty or lack thereof in the subjects being taught. This project aims to identify the key factors effecting student demotivation in self-study, and through critical analysis and evaluation of existing literature material, understanding the requirements of the relevant parties through questionnaires and interviews, taking all legal, ethical, social considerations into account and to design and develop a suitable solution using appropriate methodologies that would potentially help combat the issue. Based on the findings Study Buddy was conceptualized as a mobile app that would use gamification as a method of extrinsic motivation by rewarding the students for successfully studying. Furthermore, it was discovered that digital distractions are the largest contributor to the lack of motivation to self-study. Therefore, Study Buddy was designed to combat this key factor by allowing students to study for a set period of time in a study session, which if closed or exited out of would result in the user not gaining any of the possible rewards. Furthermore, the app was designed with Firebase Firestore Cloud as a backend tool in mind for a more streamlined and secure user experience. Experts and non-experts were asked to evaluate the solution, who commended the implementation and the methods employed. Further enhancements were suggested and have been considered for a future release."