Uniseminar

Uniseminar Mockup für Banner für Referenzseite

Services

Concept, Development

Technology

iOS, Android

Client

Mobile Education AG

Year

2018

What was Karlmax’s role in the project?

This app has been with us for almost eight years. This time a new learning mode was added.

Why does the user need the app?

Because, with this new update, you can learn more efficiently at university.

What can the app do?

The Uniseminar app offers students mobile learning content for their study subjects at university. It can be used in combination with Uniseminar’s physical study cards. With the current version, users get an app with improved usability, and which is technically up to date. In addition, iOS users can now also use the new “Spaced Repetition” learning mode, which allows the contents of cards to be memorized even better.

Screenshot of the Uniseminar app

The challenge

Increase the effectiveness of learning? What is so easy with paper index cards, which provide an easy way to retrieve difficult questions, is a bit more complicated in an app. The user should classify the questions and their answers according to difficulty level, in order to then have the difficult questions presented at more frequent intervals. We wanted to use an adjusted version of the Spaced Repetition algorithm for this new learning mode in the iOS app. Understanding the Spaced Repetition algorithm and finding a suitable one for the Uniseminar app was not as easy as expected. Behind the concept is a complex algorithm that has been developed over many years. Unfortunately the specifications did not really fit the data that we had collected about the learning results of the user. Therefore we had to begin afresh when it came to the design and data.

How did we proceed?

For the new “Spaced Repetition” learning mode we created a new concept. We chose a simple but effective version of P.A. Wozniak’s Supermemo 2 algorithm, and are happy that the iOS app now offers even more value compared to the “real” index cards. The cards now appear at larger or smaller intervals, depending on whether they have been rated as difficult or easy.

We brought the app for Android and iOS up to the latest technical standards and made our customer’s sponsors, “Ernst & Young”, visible in the page menu and in the banner. We also improved the usability of the dashboard for the iOS app. The card sets are presented in a clearer way and to facilitate access to the store, we have added a floating action button on the dashboard and in the demo card sets.

Screenshot of the Uniseminar app

Behind the scenes – or: Why the app would have been useful during the study period.

I would have liked an app like this during my studies, because the app has several advantages that reduce student workload. How many hours did you spend in those days in front of copiers with huge, worn-out folders instead of just downloading the content to your mobile phone? But at the same time, the app also showed me how far away I was academically from being on campus between wheat beer at noon and statistics early Friday evening. A simulated run-through of supposedly simple introductory questions of economics for testing purposes led me directly back to the “caravan-sized” gaps of my university past (“Connect Four”). In my case it remains to be seen to what extent I actually learned for life and not for the alma mater.

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