The effect of customized online delivery of formative assessment tasks on primary students' engagement in English language learning

This study examined the extent to which the customized online delivery of formative assessment tasks enhanced Grade 5 students' engagement in English language learning in United Arab Emirates (UAE) public-school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design with a non-equivalent control group was implemented across four public schools in Dubai, involving 158 Grade 5 students (78 experimental, 80 control) and four English teachers over a ten-week term. The experimental group received formative assessment tasks delivered through a unified digital platform that supported interactive responses, real-time monitoring, feedback, and documentation, while the control group continued the schools' usual, non-customized formative assessment practices. Students' engagement was measured using the Panorama Student Survey, linguistically and contextually adapted for Grade 5 EFL learners, across four domains: Pedagogical Effectiveness, Classroom Rigorous Expectations, Subject Valuing, and Classroom Learning Strategies. Because Shapiro–Wilk tests indicated non-normal distributions across all four scales (p < .001), Mann–Whitney U tests were used to compare engagement outcomes between groups. Results showed that the experimental group reported significantly higher engagement than the control group on 14 of the 20 survey items (effect sizes r = .15–.27), with the largest differences observed for clarity of presentation, teacher awareness of student understanding, and comfort asking questions. The composite Overall Engagement Score was also significantly higher in the experimental group (U = 1794.00, p < .001, r = .37), a moderate effect. Items relating to classroom management and general interest in and valuing of English did not differ significantly between groups. These findings suggest that the customized online delivery of formative assessment tasks enhances students' immediate, task-specific engagement more consistently than their broader dispositional engagement with English as a subject.