Automatic pacing for question delivery

Updated 05 Mar 2024

When you enable automatic pacing for a course in the course's Settings, Learning Catalytics manages the timing of question delivery in Instructor-Led Synchronous sessions after you click Deliver for the first question in the session. You don't have to manage this aspect of classroom delivery yourself.

(This is the same technology used in Automated Synchronous sessions. )

Some questions require more response time than others, and Learning Catalytics dynamically adjusts the time available based on the pace of student responses.

When a question first becomes available, Learning Catalytics displays an elapsed-time ("count up") timer for students. Learning Catalytics watches how quickly responses come in, and predicts how much additional time is needed for the vast majority of students to respond.

At that point, the "count up" timer switches to a "count down" timer that displays the remaining time.

Students see these timers

  • On the classroom-projected Student Window in Instructor-Led Synchronous sessions
  • On their devices in Automated Synchronous sessions

When time for a question expires, Learning Catalytics uses the percentage of students who responded correctly in Round 1 to determine whether the class could benefit by discussing the question in small groups.

  • If less than 30% or more than 70% of students responded correctly, too few or too many understand the question and discussion won't be useful. Students see the results graph, as if you had selected Show all results.
  • If between 30% and 70% of students responded correctly, students should benefit from discussion. Students are automatically placed into groups, as if you had selected Assign Groups. They discuss their responses, then answer the same question again. After Round 2, students see the results graph, regardless of response percentages.

Note: The 30% and 70% default thresholds are recommended, but you can adjust these values and other grouping settings in course Settings.