Digital educational resources have been increasingly used in educational institutions, serving to support the pedagogical endeavours of teachers and students. Access to these resources can be facilitated through various platforms, websites, or even mobile devices, given the ubiquity of smartphones and the accessibility they offer to a wide range of educational software and applications available in online stores. These applications can be regarded as digital educational resources, employing techniques such as spaced repetition, gamification, and immediate feedback to enhance engagement in learning and support the teaching of content and lessons in a more attractive manner, including a playful approach.

This paper presents four applications that converge to discuss the aforementioned topic. These applications are the result of one of the challenges proposed to higher education students from Computing and Design courses participating in the Apple Developer Academy program at the Senac University Center, Santo Amaro campus (São Paulo, Brazil). The applications are as follows: AquaCultive (an educational initiative focused on aquaculture), Guardians of the Rivers (a campaign to raise awareness about environmental degradation in Brazil), Taskid (a platform designed to promote domestic habits and personal hygiene), and Mebbi (a system designed to assist in the organization and optimization of studies).

The development of these applications, which utilized the Challenge Based Learning (CBL) methodology, occurred between September and November of 2024. In this methodology, the student assumes a central role in the pedagogical process. The present paper will offer examples that demonstrate how the application of CBL in the development of technological educational solutions, such as the previously mentioned applications, has led to the adoption of recursive meta-teaching and learning practices by the students. CBL is an approach based on the principles of active methodologies, which encourage the resolution of real-world challenges.

The results of the study indicated the utilization of the CBL methodology by the students in the identification, creation, study, and development of the mobile applications they proposed. This finding suggests that the students employed a range of learning strategies, including spaced repetition, gamification, and immediate feedback, to enhance the learning process.

In this paper, the applications will be presented as case studies. Through inductive dynamics, it is possible to condense and establish the relationships between the CBL methodology and the aspects arising from digital educational resources created by the students. The present study will therefore examine the effects of CBL on the teaching and learning of diverse content within cyclical processes of knowledge construction and exploration. The central hypothesis of this study is that CBL will promote autonomy, creativity, critical thinking, and continuous learning.

Keywords: Digital educational resources, meta learning strategies, applications, CBL, computing, design.