Exploring the use of digital textbooks in classrooms: focusing on automated feedback

Automated feedback is a significant potential of digital tasks in e-textbooks that supports learning. This paper examines the types of automated feedback present in digital textbook tasks in Croatia and how they are utilized in the teaching process. The study focused on the geometric chapters of the three most widely used mathematics textbook sets in Croatia for grades 5 to 8, as well as a multiple case study involving six middle-grade teachers. The findings reveal that automated feedback is most prevalent in simple digital tasks, primarily in the form of verification, while the exploration tasks often provide hints. However, in classroom observations, these digital textbook tasks were mostly used in whole-class teaching, limiting the full potential of automated feedback.