September 2005 — Educator's Evaluation
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LearnStar Empowers Texas Tech Students
The Texas Tech teachers who used LearnStar also praised the benefits of using it both as a motivator for students to learn and as a tool to review for exams. They noted that while the competitive format was especially useful for review and drill, it also worked well for conceptual questions. For instance, the calculus classes used not only questions which tested computational skills, such as evaluating indefinite integrals, but also questions requiring deep understanding of the fundamental concepts.
Helping Teachers and Students Alike
Another key component of the Texas Tech study is the use of LearnStar in Math 4371, the Texas Tech capstone course for elementary education majors with a math specialization. The goal of the course is to give these future teachers (most of whom plan to teach at the middle school level) an understanding of the pedagogical issues involved in using classroom technology, and the confidence that they can reap the benefits of putting these tools into action. The students not only used LearnStar to review the course material they were studying,but they also experienced LearnStar from the teacher’s perspective. They developed competitions and lesson plans for using the tool to teach key objectives tested by annual, state-mandated assessment tests.
At the end of the study, each of the students filled out a questionnaire rating his or her experience using LearnStar in the classroom. One hundred percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “LearnStar is fun,” and 95.4 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “I would like to use LearnStar again.” When asked how helpful LearnStar had been in their learning the course material, they gave LearnStar a 4.23 (on average), on a scale with 5 as highest. The same students gave all other aspects of the class an average score of 3.09.
These students tend to be extremely difficult to motivate, according to their teachers, but they were very excited about using the LearnStar technology in the classroom. The teachers, too, are now aware of the benefits of this tool for their future students in the K-12 classroom, and are likely to advocate the use of similar technologies in their classrooms, throughout their careers.
The findings of this research study illustrate the benefits of educational technology for students and teachers alike. By continuing to put useful technology tools in the hands of educators, giving them the confidence to use the technology with their students, and advocating the adoption of the tools by administrators, educational technology companies like LearnStar can help students learn and make learning fun.
G. Brock Williams is a professor at Texas Tech University, teaching mathematics and statistics. He led the calculus and teacher preparation courses as part of this research study and routinely uses LearnStar in the classroom with his students.
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