Connecting with Color: How Strategic Color Selection Supports Student Success

• Use of Color in Education: When used strategically, color in math education can significantly improve learning outcomes by enhancing retention, comprehension, and information transfer, while also reducing cognitive load for students.
• Positive Emotional Design Connection: Positive emotional design is connected to improved learning outcomes, as it focuses on creating user-centric experiences that are not only functional but also enjoyable. This approach has been shown to reduce perceived difficulty, enhance retention, comprehension, and transfer of information, and positively impact learners' motivation, effort, and enjoyment.
• Emotional Impact of Color on Learning: Colors should be employed in digital learning environments to foster positive emotional experiences, which in turn can boost motivation, effort, and enjoyment in learning. Carefully chosen colors like blue, green, orange, and purple are effective in creating calming, energizing, and creative atmospheres conducive to learning.

The Influence of Colors

People connect with color.

Throughout human history, color has held deep cultural meaning. In Egyptian culture, colors like blue and green symbolized protection, rebirth, and fertility. In China, colors represented elements and directions, with red being particularly auspicious. The Greeks and Romans used color in their architecture and art to convey status and honor gods, with purple signifying royalty.

Today, the ability of color to evoke emotions, create lasting impressions, and influence what we think and how we act is leveraged more pragmatically. Consider how companies use color in their branding to communicate values, appeal to emotions, and establish recognition in the marketplace. The vibrant red of Coca-Cola, the calming blue of Facebook, the earthy brown of UPS—each hue tells a story, shaping how we perceive and interact with these brands.

Culture, Commercials, and Chalk

What is true in culture and marketing, is also true in learning.

From colored chalk and markers to overhead transparencies, color has long been used to help students connect with concepts and make mathematical information more accessible [1].
In our articles discussing our use of visuals and multiple representations in our app, we review the research showing how visuals support student learning and improve math outcomes. Within this strategic focus on the selection and utilization of visuals, we also leverage color as an essential learning scaffold.

Learning in Color

A meta-analysis of 33 studies showed that the strategic use of color enhances learning outcomes, including retention, comprehension, and transfer, and increases intrinsic motivation [2]. A study of 3,236 6-10 year-olds found that color coding improves students’ intuitive sense of numerosity [3]. The use of color-enhanced materials has been shown to reduce load on the working memory, leading to a 34% reduction in the time it takes for students to solve math problems [4].

Because of how effective color is in supporting student learning, in our app we use color in constructing diagrams, serving both as a representational tool and a strategic tool for understanding. We use color to highlight relevant information and foreground relationships. We use color to guide students through complex mathematical concepts.

All of these uses are important and impactful, which is why we have designed our app to maximize the usefulness of color in the communication of complex concepts. Even more fundamentally, however, our app design gives particular attention to the role color plays in influencing emotions.

Affect Affects Performance

The better students feel, the better they learn [5].

The study of the role of affect on math performance has grown in depth and complexity since its beginnings in the early 1900s. With contributions from the fields of educational psychology and the science of learning, the development of sophisticated instruments reveals affect as a multifaceted construct that deeply influences mathematical learning and performance [6].

Designing for Positive Affect

In designing digital environments, positive affect is supported through positive emotional design. The goal of positive emotional design is creating user-centric experiences and interactions that are not only functional but also enjoyable.

A meta-analysis of 28 studies on the effects of emotional design in multimedia environments showed that positive emotional design reduces perceived difficulty; enhances retention, comprehension, and transfer of information; and, positively impacts learners' motivation, effort, and enjoyment [7].

Color is a core component of emotional design, as students’ perceptions of colors influence their affect [5] [8]. Vivid reds and yellows have been shown to increase stress in learners [9] and reduce recall [8], while blue tones have been shown to enhance concentration [9] and memory [8].

Our Color Choices

Drawing from conceptual and empirical work on the psychological and physiological impact of color on human cognition [10], for our app we have selected colors that have been shown to most positively support student affect, resulting in improved outcomes.

• Blue: Blue is associated with feelings of calmness, stability, and serenity. It has been shown to induce relaxation and peace, resulting in a soothing effect on the mind and body.
• Orange: Orange is associated with feelings of energy, enthusiasm, and warmth. It has been shown to stimulate excitement and creativity, resulting in an invigorating and uplifting effect.
• Green: Green is associated with feelings of tranquility, health, and harmony. It has been shown to create a sense of refreshment and natural balance, resulting in a calming and rejuvenating effect.
• Purple: Purple is associated with feelings of luxury, mystery, and spirituality. It has been shown to evoke a sense of sophistication and creativity, resulting in an inspiring and thought-provoking effect.

Feeling and Learning

We based our decision to strategically prioritize color selection in our app on two very simple, but powerful premises:

• Positive emotions enhance learning [11]
• Specific colors enhance positive emotions [8] [9] [10]

Therefore, we designed our app using colors that connect students with the concepts they are learning in a way that reduces anxiety, distraction, and extraneous cognitive load; while at the same time increasing comfort, motivation, and understanding.

In our app, our use of color is just one way we communicate to students that our only goal is their success—and we believe our color selections will help them feel that!

References

[1] Toney, A. F., Slaten, K. M., Peters, E. F., & Hauk, S. (2013). Color work to enhance proof-writing in geometry. Journal of the California Mathematics Project, 6(1), 9-19. http://bookwalk.com/papers/ToneyEtAl2013JCMP.pdf

[2] Brom, C., Starkova, T., & D'Mello, S. K. (2018). How effective is emotional design? A meta-analysis on facial anthropomorphisms and pleasant colors during multimedia learning. Educational Research Review, 25, 100-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.09.004

[3] Rinaldi, L. J., Smees, R., Alvarez, J., & Simner, J. (2020). Do the colors of educational number tools improve children’s mathematics and numerosity?. Child development, 91(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13314

[4] Ekman, H., & Waliullah, F. (2019). Reducing cognitive load on the working memory by signaling primed colors: Can color improve the learning of mathematics? https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1327786/FULLTEXT02

[5] Münchow, H., Mengelkamp, C., & Bannert, M. (2017). The better you feel the better you learn: do warm colours and rounded shapes enhance learning outcome in multimedia learning?. Education Research International, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/2148139

[6] Chamberlin, S. A. (2010). A review of instruments created to assess affect in mathematics. Journal of Mathematics education, 167-182. https://journalofmathed.scholasticahq.com/article/90462.pdf

[7] Wong, R. M., & Adesope, O. O. (2021). Meta-analysis of emotional designs in multimedia learning: A replication and extension study. Educational Psychology Review, 33, 357-385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09545-x

[8] Kumi, R., Conway, C. M., Limayem, M., & Goyal, S. (2012). Learning in color: how color and affect influence learning outcomes. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 56(1), 2-15. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2012.2208390

[9] AL‐Ayash, A., Kane, R. T., Smith, D., & Green‐Armytage, P. (2016). The influence of color on student emotion, heart rate, and performance in learning environments. Color Research & Application, 41(2), 196-205. https://doi.org/10.1002/col.21949

[10] Elliot, A. J. (2019). A historically based review of empirical work on color and psychological functioning: Content, methods, and recommendations for future research. Review of General Psychology, 23(2), 177-200. https://doi.org/10.1037/gpr0000170

[11] Plass, J. L., Heidig, S., Hayward, E. O., Homer, B. D., & Um, E. (2014). Emotional design in multimedia learning: Effects of shape and color on affect and learning. Learning and Instruction, 29, 128-140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.02.006