• Revel boosts student performance in Humanities intro course

    by Pearson

    Man looking at computer sitting on a couch

    Revel contributes to student success

    In Fall 2017, Professor Dr. Patricia Eshagh from California State University Stanislaus in Turlock, CA, partnered with Pearson to investigate the impact of Revel™ for Discovering the Humanities by Sayre on student success in her Introduction to the Humanities course.

  • Smarthinking online tutoring enhances student performance

    by Pearson

    A woman sitting on steps and working on laptop, with stationery beside her.

    Smarthinking enhances student performance

    In 2018, several professors at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, PA, partnered with Pearson to investigate the impact of Smarthinking™ online tutoring on student achievement in a variety of courses.

  • Revel Communication positively impacts student performance

    by Pearson

    A man standing to the wall and looking at mobile. A bicycle beside him.

    Revel Communication positively impacts student success

    In Fall 2018, Professor Aileen Ochoa from Miami Dad College Kendall Campus in Miami, FL, partnered with Pearson to investigate the impact of Revel™ for Essentials of Human Communication by DeVito on student performance in her Fundamentals of Speech Communication course.

  • Benefits of MediaShare for instructors and students

    by Pearson

    A man sitting at a table and working on laptop

    How MediaShare benefits instructors and students

    Professor Laurie Metcalf at Blinn College in Bryan, TX reported many perceived advantages of using MediaShare™ for her online public speaking course. Specifically, she named her ability to accomplish the following:

    Time-stamping specific feedback in students' videos to support their development of public speaking skills.

    • Providing more feedback to students' videos because of the ability to copy and paste feedback in MediaShare's grading rubric.
    • Looking across assignments for the same student to determine whether a problem is recurring and adjusting her grading and communication with the student accordingly.

    Click here to read the full story or continue reading to learn more.

    About MediaShare

    MediaShare is a tool for sharing, assigning, discussing, and evaluating media in different formats, including video and audio files. It enables students and instructors to comment on media, and instructors can provide timestamped feedback to students on their assignments.

    Implementation of MediaShare

    For her online public speaking course, Professor Laurie Metcalf has used MediaShare for five or more years. MediaShare’s role in her class is primarily for students to submit four required speech assignments and for Laurie to provide grades and detailed feedback on those assignments.

    She views MediaShare as benefitting students through the development of students’ source citations and use of appropriate language, as well as offering her a way to see how individual students are progressing over time allowing her to offer targeted intervention.

    Instructor experience and perception

    Laurie views the capacity to provide timestamped feedback in students’ videos as very beneficial to learning as it allows her to focus on a specific spot in the recording. Relatedly, Laurie has found the setup of MediaShare to enable more of her feedback for those moments.

    Laurie finds the layout of the rubric advantageous as it allows her to do all of her grading on one screen. For the school break that extended through the end of the year because of the coronavirus pandemic, this functionality proved especially useful.

    In addition, Laurie believes student performance has improved due to MediaShare in the way students give source citations and their use of appropriate language.

    Conclusion

    From her perspective, the positive aspects of MediaShare give her online course advantages above and beyond what is possible for an in-person class saying, “We don’t even have that ability in a live class to do that. To stop a speech and say, look, ‘Did you hear what you just said? Did you hear how that sounded?’ And, ‘Here’s the problem.’ Or, ‘Here’s why it’s great.’ So that in and of itself I think is fantastic.”

    Read the full findings here

    Learn more about how MediaShare could benefit your course

  • Enhance student success with Revel History

    by Pearson Results Team

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    Pearson interviewed instructors across the United States in fall 2020 to understand how they’re using and experiencing Revel History. Through this work, we found that Revel History empowers students to actively participate in learning.

    Read the complete findings here or continue reading to understand what they have to say. 

    Revel improves student performance

    David Toye, full-time professor at Northeast State Community College in Tennessee, finds that when his students use Revel, they perform better both in class and overall in the course, as compared to those who don’t take advantage of its learning resources.

    “I see that students who are engaged with Revel and reading the textbook are doing very well in my course. The ones who do not read generally get a C or worse. The ones who are doing the reading come to class and are more likely to speak up and do well on class activities.”

    Revel engages students

    Kevin Brady finds value in the variety of resources in Revel because they keep students engaged in the material, therefore strengthening their knowledge of historical concepts.

    “The [interactives] keep them engaged. Once they finish a video they get to see the quizzes, the primary document, activities and more videos. It is kind of building upon what they can see next. It’s like entertainment for them.”

    Revel contains high quality content and authoritative authors

    Kevin Brady appreciates the author’s style and ability to write a textbook that resonates with students of all levels, not just those desiring to be history majors. The author’s ability to entice students to delve deeper into history is one of the main reasons he continues to utilize Revel.

    “I love H.W. Brands. He is a phenomenal storyteller. He definitely has charisma, a real knack for this. He is not only a great speaker, but he is also a great writer. He is so concise, with a bullet-point type style, so the information is not overwhelming for students. He writes in such a way that he’s not dumbing it down for anybody, but he’s not keeping it at such a level that only a history major would understand it. Students walk away from the chapters knowing the main themes. During our class meetings I will ask students what they did not understand, if there were any issues, and I don’t see that much from students [since implementing Revel]. It is not like I used to see when I used other textbooks where students were so confused about the material. This textbook works so much better.”

    Revel supports instructors

    Revel is so well aligned with David Kiracofe’s course requirements, he has made all of his assessments come from Revel, which made the program an integral part of the course design. He finds designing the course around Revel easy.

    “Customizing the textbook and being able to pull stuff out of it is really helpful. It is very intuitive to be able to go in there with that flexibility within Revel to customize. It is easy to do. It is easy clicking.”

    Read the full findings here

    Learn more about how Revel History could benefit your course

  • Enhance student success with Revel Political Science

    by Pearson Results Team

    A woman sits in a window seat looking at a laptop computer, with a dog on her lap.

    Pearson interviewed instructors across the United States in early fall 2020 to understand how they’re using and experiencing Revel Political Science. Through this work, we found that the high-quality, relevant content in Revel Political Science helps students succeed.

    Read the complete findings here or continue reading to understand what they have to say. 

    Revel has current & relatable content that applies to students’ everyday lives

    David Dr. Rich Haesly, full-time professor at California State University Long Beach, finds real value in Revel’s Current Events Bulletins because they highlight important events. The Bulletins also strongly resonate with the students and establish high-quality writing prompts that engage students and encourage informed discussion.

    “The Current Events Bulletins…are ripped from the headlines. [They are] ideas that become really great sources for writing prompts. This is stuff [students] need to know, not just to do well in the course, but they are important ideas to think about.”

    Revel helps students succeed

    Terri Evans finds students who take advantage of Revel quizzes perform better when compared to those who don’t utilize Revel.

    “For the students that do not do well on their exam or need some improvement, the first thing I do is go into Revel and see if they are even using the system. I found for those students that are not using Revel to do some testing along the way, compared to those that do, there is a grade difference there.”

    “The students that did take up work in Revel, it helped them. It helped them prepare for their final exam and their learning improved.”

    Revel monitors student engagement & performance

    Dr. Elizabeth Williams monitors student engagement and performance to intervene with struggling students.

    “The student performance data I receive (on individual students, their grade trend, and time spent on task) allow me to tailor much earlier intervention with struggling students. I meet with them earlier in the term, well before poor performance on much more heavily weighed exams. It is a sort of preventive academic counselling, and very active listening on my part.”

    Read the full findings here

    Learn more about how Revel Political Science could benefit your course