Review of Learning Catalytics, An Interactive Student Response Tool

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 Because highlighting questions cannot be automatically scored, they are best suited for ungraded review questions or for participation questions in which students earn full credit for answering the questions regardless of whether their answers are correct. Highlights can be manually graded, but this process is time-intensive for large courses.

2 The pedagogical benefits of peer instruction for student learning are well documented. See, for instance, Fagen, Crouch, and Mazur (2002) and Lasry, Mazur, and Watkins (2008). For a useful demonstration of how to use Learning Catalytics to facilitate peer instruction, see Christine Lindstrom, “Using Peer Instruction to Help Pre-service Science Teachers Learn Physics,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 5xE1Hwq6YPw.

3 Some SRS have created solutions to this problem. Top Hat Test, for instance, locks students out of the test if they open another program or web browser window and sends instructors the names of any students whose behavior indicates that they may be cheating.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara A. Newland

Sara A. Newland is assistant professor of government at Smith College. Her research focuses on local governance in mainland China and Taiwan and on using active learning and student response technology to improve learning in political science courses.