Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 56

Discussion
Acknowledgements
Learning Catalytics™ collects a huge amount of
data that can be used for research and to improve
learning outcomes. Some examples include:
• cumulative and individual students’ attendance
throughout the semester;
• recurring incorrect answers that may indicate a
misconception;
• testing the commonly held belief that students
in the front row perform better than the ones in
the back;
• Studying the impact of grouping on the change
in answer on individual students or as the
semester progresses.
It can also be used to survey students during the
semester to ask for their feedback on the class and
pedagogy. A survey of 105 students enrolled in the
course in fall 2018, administered at the beginning of
week 4, showed that 60% found in-class discussions
and short lectures most helpful, followed by Learning
Catalytics (53%), online homework (49%), working
with their peers (37%), and reading the textbook
(22%).
Conclusions
SRSs provide a convenient and versatile way for
instructors to engage students through formative
and summative assessment, and to record student
responses and use them to improve learning
outcomes. Based on four years of experience with
Learning Catalytics™, this SRS designed to support
the peer instruction and Just-in-Time Teaching
pedagogies provides all the features of the more
advanced SRSs with the ability to automatically pair
up students and facilitate peer-to-peer learning.
However, it is unclear if using technology to
implement peer instruction is better than simply
using flashcards (Lasry, 2008). But no matter what
we use to engage students, the key is their learning
and engagement, and peer instruction delivers that.
I wish to thank the Institute of Liberal Arts and
Sciences at Keele University for hosting me during
my sabbatical in spring 2019, and for providing
me the opportunity and support to work on this
contribution through an ILAS Fellowship. I am also
grateful to Jamie Pringle and Zoe Robinson for their
encouragement, and Jo Flynn for comments to an
early draft of this paper.
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