Grant recipients:
Daniel Smilek, Psychology
Jeffrey D. Wammes, Yale University
(Project timeline: January 2018-December 2019)
Description
- This project aims to develop software applications that monitor student engagement during lectures in real-time, and also capturing the lecture content being presented by the instructor, and then merging the outputs.
- The applications were implemented into three undergraduate courses, where instructors were provided with detailed insights of the changed in student engagement surrounding the lecture slides and content.
Questions Investigated
- Are there systematic changes in students’ level of attentional engagement as a function of moment-to-moment changes in course content?
- Are these changes in engagement tied to performance in the course (both in in-class quizzes, and in later exam performance)?
- Is there a correspondence between student engagement levels, and which content instructors expect would be engaging?
Findings
- The data samples confirmed a preliminary finding that was suggestive of a strong positive correlation between student ratings of engagement and their ratings of understanding.
- Engagement and understand both peak around 20–30 minutes into a lecture.
- However, engagement levels differ student to student, as it was observed that some students are more engaged at the beginning of lecture, and some more engaged at the end of lecture.
Dissemination and impact
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Within the Department of Psychology, many students were able to make use of this application, and were able to receive feedback about their engagement levels.
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Feedback received from the implementation of these applications has led to increased information for instructors on where to place breaks and/or quizzes within the structure of their lectures.
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Further developed editions of these applications are to be available to instructors in the future.
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Findings from our studies as well as an example of the visual feedback provided to instructors were presented at the McMaster Conference on Education and Cognition in July 2019 and July 2020. A manuscript is published at the British Journal of Educational Psychology.
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Smith, A. C., Ralph, B. C., Smilek, D., & Wammes, J. D. (2023). The relation between trait flow and engagement, understanding, and grades in undergraduate lectures. British Journal of Educational Psychology.
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Implications
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Recipients have incorporated, or plan to incorporate the use of these applications in their own teaching.
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Further research will be completed on these applications, to better be able to support instructors.
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Collaboration with researchers at McMaster and Queen’s Universities, using these applications for data collection and the improvement of pedagogy in large scale introductory psychology courses.