Right and wrong answer indicators
Earlier in the development process I discussed the work I did for practice 2 with the Nursery teacher at school and talked about different approaches to indicating whether an answer was right or wrong.
Current pedagogical thinking for early years education places an emphasis on the positive, encouraging the child and giving praise when they achieve rather than placing too much emphasis on wrong answers or things they didn't do as well with. This approach is evident in the methods teachers use to mark work - using a tick for correct answers, but not using a cross for wrong answers. Children still know that they did not get those answers correct because of the absence of a tick, but the force of negativity has less impact with the absence of a cross.
When designing the interface for the blast off app quiz, I wanted to use this same approach to indicate right or wrong answers, so adopted the use of a tick when the answer was correct and decided against using a cross for the wrong answer because of the negative connotations.
To reinforce this message, I added a green band around the correct answer and simultaneously showed the answer in green next to the sum. I chose the colour green because of the semiotic connotations - go, yes, good, right.
This approach worked well for correct answers, but there needed to be some form of indication when a wrong answer was selected. Following on from the use of green, I applied the same semiotic theory and used the colour red for a band around the wrong answer. I chose red because of its typical interpretations, meaning stop, no, bad, wrong.
To maintain the reinforcement of the positive, I decided to emphasis the correct answer at this point, adding a green circle around the correct option and the correct number in green next to the sum. The absence of the tick and the red ring around the selected answer provides distinct differentiation between right and wrong selections, and there is an additional delay before moving onto the next question when the wrong answer has been selected to allow time for the child to understand what has happened and read the correct answer.
This solution worked well (although most adults who saw my work questioned the lack of a cross!) and my son responded well to this. When he got an answer wrong, his typical reaction was:
"I didn't get a tick that time"
I have decided now to add a cross-bar to the circle to add further emphasis without the additional negativity of a full cross. The inspiration for this came from the inflight safety card on board a recent flight. These cards use icongraphy and a series of images with no words to convey important safety instructions that have to be clearly understood quickly by all nationalities. I noticed that the symbol they used for not doing something was a red circle with a line across, and I felt that this more clearly conveys 'not' or 'no' than a circle without the cross, but is still in line with current pedagogical thinking.