Impact Of Question Difficulty On Engagement And Learning

We study the impact of question difficulty on learners' engagement and learning using an experiment with an open online educational system for adaptive practice of geography. The experiment shows that easy questions are better for short term engagement, whereas difficult questions are better for long term engagement and learning. These results stress the necessity of careful formalization of goals and optimization criteria of open online education systems. We also present disaggregation of overall results into specific contexts of practice.