It is important to gradually increase the difficulty of questions in a reinforcement program to maximize engagement, retention, and learning effectiveness.
- Initial engagement: Start with easy questions to build the learner’s confidence and encourage them to continue. However, avoid having only easy questions, as more performant learners might lose interest too quickly.
- Foundation consolidation: The first steps serve to check and reinforce fundamental knowledge before introducing more complex concepts.
- Controlled progression: Gradually increase the difficulty to maintain optimal cognitive effort without causing excessive frustration.
- Zone of proximal development: Offer challenges adapted to the learner’s level to maximize progressive learning.
- Long-term retention: More difficult questions strengthen memory by requiring the learner to think actively.
- Preparation for real life: Simulate the increasing complexity of professional world challenges to train better-prepared learners.
By indicating the difficulty level of each question, you can thus build a program that takes these principles into account. See more details here “Questions with feedback” activities
Repetition of Question
Additionally, it is recommended to repeat the more difficult questions to give the learner multiple practice opportunities, even if they answered correctly on the first iteration. Repetition helps strengthen memory.
💡Our recommendation: medium-level questions should be seen twice in a program, and difficult questions should be seen three times in the program.
Use in B12
Specifically for B12 features, the difficulty level is used in 3 places :
1. In the dashboards: you can filter data by difficulty level.
2. In adaptive programs powered by artificial intelligence. See here How the program adaptation algorithm works
3. In the "Generate program" tool, you can create a program from scratch. Once your entire question bank is built in the Studio, B12 can generate a program that follows difficulty level progression and question repetition best practices. This feature automatically considers question difficulty when structuring your activity sequences — ensuring a gradual increase in challenge and appropriate repetition of questions.