Learning Catalytics: Pre-lecture Group Interaction
Design Pattern Tags : Active learning, Connected learning, Flipped classroom
Learning Catalytics: Pre-lecture Group Interaction May 2016
Learning Catalytics (LC) gives students the opportunity to articulate their thinking, listen to contrary views and move to deeper conceptual understanding. It develops problem solving skills and long term retention.
Rationale Learning Catalytics encourages peer to peer student learning in an active and engaging learning environment to promote critical thinking.
Learners/Context Learning Catalytics is a rich system for content delivery, instruction and interaction. It is used for peer to peer learning to develop critical thinking in pre-lecture activities to move towards a flipped classroom model of instruction.
Learning Catalytics is a commercial third party product developed by Pearson. LC is fully integrated with Mastering or selected MyLabs (refer to Resources/Technology) and other disciplines. Both the lecturer and the students need to have accounts in LC to access the resources. Additionally, depending on the institution’s level of integration, LC is capable of outputting student activity scores to course grade books.
Alignment Learning Catalytics gives students the opportunity to identify their understanding at a particular moment in their learning.
Instructions/Processes Prior to Lecture
Decide what content is relevant to the upcoming lecture. It is wise to focus this interactive pre-lecture activity around the foundational and/or preliminary concepts. This allows for the lecture to focus work in class on the more complex content.
Design questions related to the online content and current topic. Many courses will have questions created by Pearson specifically for LC. LC has a searchable shared question library where instructors can share questions and you can combine your own questions with what you find. The authoring tool will allow you to create your own questions and tie in others you find.
Enter the Pearson MyLab & Mastering site (refer to Resources/Technology).
Register on the Pearson site.
Browse by discipline and select the appropriate discipline e.g. Business or MyManagementLab (refer to Resources/Technology)
Select create a module and fill in the appropriate boxes.
Assign students to groups or LC can place students in groups based on their responses. They can be assigned to join a live team chat session or forums to discuss their answers and understandings.
The system can be set for students to resubmit answers after discussion if required. This pre and post submission data can prove quite illuminating in terms of demonstrating the value of peer coaching.
In lecture
In the lecture, Learning Catalytics can be used in a dynamic think-pair-share strategy.
Select the questions and launch them in LC to students during the lecture.
Ask students to answer the question online. After they have answered the online questions, LC places students into groups.
Ask students to sit together or use the LC chat facility to justify their answer/s face to face or online to their group. The group is given a timed deadline upon which to reach consensus.
Ask students to resubmit their answers as a team. The pre and post submission data is valuable for supporting student learning and highlighting important concepts.
Conditions/Critical Success Factors Learning Catalytics gives students the opportunity to identify their understanding at a particular moment in their learning.
Resources/ Technology
