How Technology Can Help You Get The Most Out of All Your Students
In a perfect world, all students would come to Higher Education imbued with searing determination, a devotion to their subject and an almost blinkered academic focus. Unfortunately, we know that the reality is very different, with most students’ time and attention pulled in different directions by other interests and responsibilities. While extremely natural, this can result in suboptimal learning practices that can ultimately affect final grade and retention of learning. So, what can be done to help students learn more effectively and consistently?
Garry Sheahan, Senior Academic Consultant for McGraw-Hill, describes how he was a typical middle tier student. With a passion for sports, he admits that studying wasn’t always his top priority, and he viewed college not purely in terms of educational achievement, but also as an experience to be enjoyed. Like many students then – and indeed today – he would do just enough to get by, cramming at the 11th hour for exams from his notes and the internet. “I feel like I can somewhat empathise with the typical modern student” he says.
What would have helped is a little more structure, more discussion on application, more time spent bringing topics to life. All things that Connect can make possible. SmartBook can reintroduce reading into the process and ensure that students are touching base with the material throughout the term, pacing their digestion of content and working to reinforce and transition that material from short term to long term memory – versus a situation where it’s being packed into their brain for a 24-hour period, purely to ‘survive’ an in-class MCQ.
“It also allows a 600-student cohort module leader to see what’s going on in the group – who is engaged, who is not, who is performing well, who is not, and even which areas students are finding more challenging. It allows instructors to implement a system that will work with each individual student providing feedback and insights to cover the basic concepts of the course so that face-to-face time can be spent diving into the interesting stuff!”
However, as per the old adage about taking the horse to water, he recognises that simply having Connect and SmartBook available isn’t sufficient in and of itself. Instead, it requires instructors to make it a core component of the course, part of the teaching approach. “I’ve seen first-hand that it doesn’t work as well as it could unless all students are onboarded and using the system and the instructor is strategically incentivising Connect-based activity to encourage the right behaviours.”
Having consulted with hundreds of instructors across Ireland, Garry was aware that it was relatively common practice to allocate a small portion of grade to lecture and tutorial attendance, so it seemed a logical step also to attach grade to reading in SmartBook. “For the first time, it is possible to set and incentivise a reading assignment in a meaningful way, so I started speaking to instructors about allocating the marks in a new and impactful way – 10% of grade for 10 hours of interaction with the key content from the book for example – hours that we can track and even gauge the quality of the interaction.”
“A lot of them were really excited about this, they could see the benefit straight away, and it was something they had wanted to be able to do for a long time. The results over the past couple of years have this have been incredible, with instructors regularly telling me that they’re seeing engagement over 90%.”
“Instructors then have the option to layer on more traditional online assessments using our sophisticated and professionally developed question banks and bring in the application piece using our discipline specific simulations – but the reading component is the starting point and the core of the approach.”
As important as the reading element is, Garry believes that the potential for technology to really revolutionise teaching and learning goes much deeper. “For me, the true potential of technology is in doing the stuff that instructors don’t need to so that they can put their time and energy into inspiring and developing the passion for their discipline. I think the key to really engaging modern undergraduate students is showing them why they selected the course, creating the link between the difficult stuff, the fun stuff and the ultimate reason why it’s all relevant. Technology like SmartBook and Connect can significantly simplify and speed up the process and the sooner students develop that passion and inquisitiveness, the more fruitful their three/four years in college can be.”
To find out more about how Connect can help with motivation and engagement, download our new Whitepaper: "Motivation and Engagement: Strategies to Success" that looks at how universities in Ireland have been using educational technology to maximise and incentivise course engagement and how ed tech fits in with prevailing theories of motivation.
Or, sign up for our upcoming webinar on 28th February to hear from Dr Alejandra Ramos and Dr Donal Palcic about the different ways they are using technology and the impact that it is having on engagement and results. Find out more: Motivation and Engagement: Strategies for Student Success