The next year, during the fall 2010 semester for the same course, I adjusted the requirement for completion of LearnSmart management modules to 100 percent and assigned approximately 24 percent of the total course grade to this component.
Combined with the Connect interactive exercises (12 percent) and quizzes (12 percent), the online portion of the course totaled almost half of the final grade. During class meetings, I was able to focus on the application and integration of concepts, because the students had gained a substantial proficiency with the vocabulary.
The quality of my students’ preparation for interviews with the directors from our community partner, their reflective essays on those interviews, and the planning and execution of their team projects were superior to the previous year.
I attribute a great deal of this increase to the students’ more complete use of LearnSmart and their ability to put into practice the retained concepts I knew they had mastered.
The difference to date has been remarkable.
For more on student engagement in higher education:
Can Twitter use help improve grades? Some researchers think so
After a brief learning curve, students adjusted well to this methodology. It was evident they were learning the material because of direct interaction with LearnSmart. Additionally, with full student participation, I was able to see which concepts were causing difficulties for the group as a whole, and I could focus more on these concepts during lecture time as needed.
The extrinsic reward made a difference in getting the students to use LearnSmart, but soon the intrinsic rewards associated with having more control over the learning process, receiving immediate and reliable feedback, and gaining a sense of accomplishment took precedence.
By mid-semester, students willingly shared with me the value they saw in completing the LearnSmart modules.
Each term with LearnSmart’s adaptive learning tool has provided me with an opportunity to adjust my own approach to teaching the field of management. Going forward, I plan to take advantage of the sophisticated analytics available for assessing how students are performing.
Tools such as LearnSmart provide professors with the motivational collateral required and the critical insight needed in an increasingly digital world.
Incorporating adaptive learning tools on a greater scale would undoubtedly aid other educators in preparing students for required mastery of scholarly subjects and beyond.
Paul Thurston Jr., Ph.D., is assistant professor of Marketing and Management at Siena College in Loudonville, New York. He received his doctorate degree in Organizational Studies from the State University of New York at Albany.
- Research: Social media has negative impact on academic performance - April 2, 2020
- Number 1: Social media has negative impact on academic performance - December 31, 2014
- 6 reasons campus networks must change - September 30, 2014