• The Success of the First-Ever Learning Catalytics Summit

    by Pearson

    College students listening in a lecture

    At Pearson, we’re always listening to faculty and students and, recently, we kept hearing one refrain over and over — classroom engagement was at an all-time low. Fortunately, we knew just what to do. In fact, we had a solution ready.

    For years, Pearson’s Learning Catalytics interactive student response tool has been helping instructors and students connect in meaningful ways. As soon as we knew classroom engagement was lagging, we knew we needed to host a Learning Catalytics Summit to help more instructors learn how to use — and make the most of — this incredible tool.

    On August 1, we hosted the first-ever Learning Catalytics Summit to great acclaim. Attendees participated in four different webinar sessions hosted by Learning Catalytics experts. Each session focused on a specific advantage of Learning Catalytics, but they all spoke to the ways the student response tool can help instructors see learning as it happens.

    The overall message: Learning Catalytics is a powerful student response and assessment tool. As session-leader Aaron Warnock said, “Learning Catalytics — and I cannot exaggerate — revolutionized my classroom.” Brad Mehrtens concurred in his session, adding, “Learning Catalytics makes a huge difference in student engagement at any scale.”

    How Does Learning Catalytics Work?

    Designed to work on laptops and all common smart devices, Learning Catalytics gives instructors a way to connect directly to students and know when everyone is following a lesson and when some are falling behind. This real-time assessment allows instructors to adjust their teaching in-the-moment and address student confusion before it becomes a problem.

    Learning Catalytics empowers instructors to:

    • Engage students with 18 question types that include graphing, drawing, multiple choice selections, open-ended dialogues, and more
    • Identify misconceptions and monitor responses to find out where students are struggling
    • Facilitate peer-to-peer learning with automatic grouping of students so that every group has a member who understands the material

    These features are available whether the class is in-person or online, making Learning Catalytics useful in every teaching environment. As Brad Mehrtens said about his experience using Learning Catalytics with even difficult-to-connect-with classrooms, “[The students] were there, they were engaged. [Learning Catalytics] works… It’s the only thing that works.”

    What Did the Learning Catalytics Summit Cover?

    The summit’s four unique sessions provided a wealth of information on how Learning Catalytics works and how instructors can use it in all kinds of classroom settings and situations. An hour-long each, the sessions included:

    “Unleashing the Power of Learning Catalytics in a Hybrid Environment” with Aaron Warnock

    Aaron Warnock’s session focused primarily on the way Learning Catalytics’ question-and-answer function helps instructors connect with students and students learn better in hybrid environments. Aaron showed audiences how students can answer questions by drawing graphs, clicking on different regions of an image, highlighting relevant information, evaluating complex problems, or simply filling in a multiple choice answer.

    Aaron noted that the different question types give instructors a lot of flexibility in the ways they monitor student learning. Plus, the questions make it easier to get students to answer without them feeling uncomfortable, because everyone participates and no one feels put on the spot.

    “When I saw Learning Catalytics for the first time, and the eighteen different question types that are available, I was instantly sold,” Aaron said. “It creates a fantastic, engaging learning environment for students.”

    “Transforming Large-Classroom Activities with Learning Catalytics” with Brad Mehrtens

    Being a professor who routinely teaches classes as large as 600 students, Brad Mehrtens understands the challenges of connecting with students. In his session, he spoke to how Learning Catalytics helps him keep students engaged in even the largest lecture halls.

    After regularly watching class attendance dwindle — particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic — he started using Learning Catalytics. He immediately had a much better sense of how well his students were learning and, to his delight, attendance evened out.

    “I was as deflated by the pandemic as anyone was, and Learning Catalytics has made me excited about teaching again,” Brad says. “And I don’t say that lightly. It has completely recharged my battery and made it fun to be back in the classroom”

    “Connecting with Learning Catalytics for Success Throughout Your Course” with Pamela Sandstrom

    A number of years ago, Pamela Sandstrom was using other types of student response tools — but that all changed. “Once I switched [to Learning Catalytics], I’ve never even thought about using any other instant response system because of how much [Learning Catalytics] can do,” she said in her summit session.

    Centered on the ways Learning Catalytics can positively impact a course at multiple moments and in numerous ways, Pamela’s talk discussed how useful the real-time data on student learning is to her instruction.

    “Learning Catalytics provides formative assessment,” she said. “But to me that means that I don’t have to wait till the test, or even till the end of the lecture — [I can see] how they’re doing in the class real time”

    “The Tips and Tricks You Need to Know About Learning Catalytics” with Terry Austin

    During his session, Terry Austin shared his screen to demonstrate exactly how Learning Catalytics works and all the ways he can customize it for the needs of a specific class. As an instructor who has been using Learning Catalytics for a decade, he had a lot of great tips and tricks, ranging from linking Learning Catalytics to a Pearson Mastering class to using it to improve seat maps to incorporating it into classroom presentations.

    “Learning Catalytics is clever,” Terry said, noting how much the tool is capable of doing. As attendees to his session and the summit as a whole learned, he was right. Learning Catalytics can empower instructors to assess student learning in-the-moment, improve student engagement, and make classroom time much more successful.

    As Terry noted, there’s a good reason he’s been using Learning Catalytics for a decade.

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  • Taking a Proactive and Positive Approach with Students about Academic Dishonesty

    by Jessica Bernards and Wendy Fresh

    Three women are looking at a laptop computer screen. Two are seated at a desk while the third is standing.

    As educators, one of the biggest issues we have recently had to tackle in our classrooms is the increase in academic misconduct. At our college, there was a 703% increase in academic misconduct reports from Winter 2020 to Winter 2021. Additionally, there has been a tremendous rise in ed tech companies that flourished during the pandemic. We feel like every time we look in the app store, a new “math solver” app appears. As educators, we can’t even keep up!

    In a presentation with Pearson Senior Learning Designer Dr. Elaine W. Tan we discussed specific strategies to be proactive with students about academic integrity. One of those strategies was to introduce academic integrity at the beginning of the term. This proactive approach from day 1 has really made a difference in our classes. In this post, we will go into more specifics.

    Define academic misconduct in your syllabus

    It’s important to define different forms of cheating and why they’re problematic. It’s equally important to state the value of academic integrity for learning. Many students might not see a given behavior as cheating until you tell them. In fact, in a College Pulse study1, students were asked how acceptable or unacceptable it is to Google homework questions to find the answers and use study websites to find answers to test or homework questions. Over 50% of the respondents said it was acceptable to Google homework questions and 44% said it was acceptable to use study websites to find answers to test or homework questions.

    A syllabus statement about academic integrity, including a link to your institution’s student code of conduct, is an important first step to making sure your students are all on the same page. See the wording that we include in our syllabus.

    Discuss academic integrity early

    Dr. Tan’s research2 found that most students don’t find cheating a problem, with only 15% saying they are very or extremely concerned about contract cheating. This may be because instructor’s aren’t talking about it. Only 1 in 5 students had instructors that discussed that cheating was problematic. Those are alarming statistics, and a good reason why it’s so important to begin the conversation early.

    One way to begin that conversation is by setting aside time in the first two weeks of class to show them a video covering academic integrity. Presented in an engaging way, a video like this gets the students’ attention and is more effective than lecturing them. You can also find a math-specific academic integrity video in the MyLab® Math shell for our textbooks Precalculus: A Right Triangle Approach, 5th Edition & Precalculus: A Unit Circle Approach, 4th Edition.

    Build connections with students

    More findings from Dr. Tan’s research show that one of the reasons students turn to academic dishonesty is because they feel a lack of personal connection, or a sense that instructors don’t know or care about them. This can be especially true with online learning and the isolation brought on by disruptions to learning over the last few years. We can address this proactively by creating a connection within the first days of class.

    Something we started doing this past year is having a required 10-minute one-on-one meeting with each student within the first two weeks of the term. Within that meeting, we communicate to them that we are invested in their success and how the course material can help them achieve their real-life goals. We also talk about academic integrity with them. Get the template email we send out to our classes.

    Set clear, specific instructions

    Have clear and specific rules and instructions for assignments and exams so students know what is ok to use and what is not. This even comes down to stating “you cannot use the solve feature on the calculator to get the answer.”

    One of the things we do is use an exam policy checklist that students have to complete before they’re able to take their test. This checklist states which resources are allowed and which are not, links to the student code of conduct, and clearly lays out the consequences for an academic misconduct violation. View our exam policy checklist.

    By bringing in these strategies at the beginning of the term, we have found that the number of academic misconduct issues in our courses has decreased dramatically. Although academic dishonesty may never fully go away, it is important to talk about and provide students with the education to improve their actions.

    Dive deeper

    Watch the full presentation, Proactive and Positive Ways to Engage Students about Academic Integrity.

    Get sample documents for communicating with your students about academic dishonesty


    Sources

    1. Academic Integrity. (2021). College Pulse.

    2. Bakken, S., Tan, E. W. & Wood, A. (2021). A Research Review on Student Cheating. Pearson Learning & Research Design.

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  • Promote smooth instructional delivery transitions for dual enrollment math

    by Hilary Duplantis

    Young woman on a laptop

    Promote smooth instructional delivery transitions for dual enrollment math

    High school dual enrollment teachers moving fully online from a face-to-face setting during COVID had the added challenge of remaining in sync with their college partners, but classes already using Pearson’s MyMathLab for School’s (MMLS) online platform pre-pandemic have hardly missed a beat.

    As the pandemic hit, educators asked:

    • How do we keep students engaged?
    • How do we provide ample practice opportunities?
    • How do we monitor student progress?
    • How do we administer assessments?
    • How do we make ourselves fully available to our students?
    • How do we help our students accomplish their learning goals?
    • And as a dual enrollment course, how do we maintain continuity with our post-secondary partner institution?

    Pre-COVID use of MyMathLab for School helped smooth transition to remote

    For some teachers the transition to remote learning was a smooth one because their dual enrollment courses already used Pearson’s MyMathLab for School (MMLS). David Woods, Ryan Skyta, and Lauren Morris are all high school math instructors teaching dual enrollment college algebra courses in partnership with Louisiana State University (LSU). Each of these teachers utilized MMLS prior to COVID and acknowledge the multiple benefits the program has provided them and their students during the pandemic.

    Having prior experience with MMLS benefited both students and teachers, according to Ryan Skyta, math teacher at Brother Martin High School in New Orleans:

    “I feel like since we, as an entire school, used the program before the pandemic, within every department in our school, we were probably in the best shape because the kids regularly have used the program for the past couple of years, so they are very familiar with it. We didn’t have to train them on how to use it and it was an easy transition.”

    ...And helped relieve teacher stress

    The pandemic created ever fluctuating circumstances for educators. Being equipped with a fully sustainable, comprehensive online environment like MMLS can relieve some of the tension, worry, and uncertainty. For David Woods, dual enrollment math teacher at Liberty Magnet High School in Baton Rouge, having used MMLS for years prior to the pandemic eased the considerable amount of stress he felt while transitioning to remote instruction. He believes it could have done the same for others, as he heard firsthand how other teachers struggled and it made him thankful for the multiple resources MMLS offered him and his students.

    “I can’t reiterate enough the fact that MyMathLab for School allowed us to have such a smooth transition. I know I have a lot of colleagues around the country that were struggling. How am I going to assess my students? How am I going to provide them this opportunity? Does anybody know anything that’s out there that my students could possibly be doing, or that I can be using as a teacher? MyMathLab for School was a huge component in sparing me from that because we already had a digital platform that the students could continue to use that was already equipped with videos, activities, lessons, quizzes, and assessments. We could just roll through it and since we were already using it, there was no learning curve.”

    “View an example” and “Help Me Solve This” features help students work independently

    Lauren Morris, dual enrollment math teacher and department chair at St. Joseph’s Academy in Baton Rouge, found the View an Example and Help Me Solve This features were the most impactful and heavily utilized aspects of MMLS once fully remote. Lauren noted that students relied greatly on those features because they were no longer in the classroom asking questions and receiving immediate responses from teachers. She felt it gave them resources to rely on, when needed.

    View an Example helped Ryan Skyta’s students work independently at home.

    “If we didn’t have MyMathLab for School we certainly would have had much bigger issues when it came to students trying to figure things out. They love the View an Example feature when it comes to doing their homework. That was definitely a huge advantage.”

    Whether fully remote, hybrid, or face-to-face, the Pearson MMLS online platform offers students stability and dual enrollment teachers' confidence their courses maintain rigor and remain in sync with their college partners.

    Learn more about MyMathLab for School

    Check out Pearson’s dual enrollment offerings  

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