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A ‘tutor on your shoulder’ - using Smart Worksheets leads to improved engagement and interactions in workshops at the University of Bristol
LearnSci’s Smart Worksheets were rolled out in 2017 in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol. The aim was to allow educators to see where students were struggling and adapt their teaching and workshop content based on the data provided. Students engaged with the materials immediately, improving interactions with educators and asking deeper questions. With even greater numbers of students engaging in subsequent cohorts, now almost 100% of students taking the module each year choose to use the resources.
The Challenge:
Low engagement and poor interactions in workshops
Professor Dudley Shallcross has been teaching the second year kinetics course in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol for over ten years. Typically, 150 students take this course each year, attending six weeks of lectures followed by two workshops, where they are provided with questions to work through.
Professor Shallcross and his team knew from experience that, within these workshops, students always found the same calculations difficult, and struggled to answer all the questions assigned to them. They used much of their time at the first workshop to consolidate information, due to not engaging in advance with workshop preparation.
Additionally, student interactions with staff were poor, leaving students discouraged and staff frustrated. Staff wanted to help their students, but the students couldn’t express what it was in particular they needed help with. The workshops ended up feeling like an inefficient use of both staff and students’ time.
The Solution:
A ‘tutor on your shoulder’ in a safe and non-intimidating environment
In readiness for the 2017 intake, Professor Shallcross began working with the team at LearnSci to find a solution to the challenges facing them. The result was a set of Smart Worksheets that students could use to prepare for the kinetics workshops and exams, containing all the areas where typically they make mistakes, and mirroring the questions they would be asked in the workshops.
Resources that are intuitive and easy to use
After being introduced to the Smart Worksheets and where they could be found within their VLE, students had the option to begin using them. Immediately, they found them very intuitive and easy to use.
Instant and personalised feedback was provided within the Smart Worksheets themselves, so when working through the questions, flexibly and whenever they wanted, students could immediately learn from their mistakes, having the equivalent of a ‘tutor on their shoulder’ in a non-intimidating and safe environment. This method of answering questions, away from the eyes of their postgraduate demonstrators or professors, meant students avoided any embarrassment they might have felt if they were seen to have got something wrong.
The Results:
Rapid increase in engagement and improved interactions in workshops
Several metrics strongly suggest that the introduction of Smart Worksheets has a very positive impact on student understanding. These metrics are discussed in the article ‘Smart Worksheets and Their Positive Impact on a Second-Year Chemical Kinetics Course’, published in the Journal of Chemical Education in March 2024. In summary, the first year of using the Smart Worksheets as part of the kinetics module saw a marked improvement in engagement and interactions within the workshops, with exam marks also being positively influenced. Since then, engagement has continued to increase.
60%
of students engaged with the Smart Worksheets
Nearly 100%
of students engaged with the Smart Worksheets
“The whole feel and mood of the workshops totally changed,” says Professor Shallcross, on how introducing Smart Worksheets impacted the practical sessions of the kinetics course. Students were much more engaged from the start, asking deeper questions and coming to the workshops prepared. Interactions with staff greatly improved as students were able to articulate what they did not understand, having invested time and effort in the topic beforehand and so able to attend the workshops with much more refined questions. Workshops therefore became more focused in terms of meeting the students’ needs and helping them understand concepts they were struggling with.
Staff were also able to inspect the students’ attempts in the SWs before the workshops took place. “Smart Worksheets provide a phenomenal amount of information about the students’ attempts at answering the questions, so we can immediately see where they are struggling or where misconceptions have crept in,” says Professor Shallcross. Inspecting the data beforehand meant staff were able to focus straightaway on concepts they could tell students were finding challenging, instead of not really knowing what the students needed them to focus on.
Using the Smart Worksheets on the course has never been mandatory. For the students who chose to use them in 2017, their exam results were impacted - Smart Worksheets had helped them master the key aspects of the course where they needed to be confident. Relative to other courses they took, there was clear evidence that they had performed better in the kinetics module. This in turn led to a rapid increase in engagement among the student body the following year. In the rollout year, 60% of the cohort used the Smart Worksheets. This figure has risen to nearly 100% in subsequent years. You can read about their impact in more detail in the article published in the Journal of Chemical Education.
To explore how our Smart Worksheet Library could increase student engagement in your department, request a free, personalised demo and one of our team will be in touch.