Indicate your seat on a seat map

If your instructor has associated your course with a Learning Catalytics seat map, you might be prompted to indicate your seat when you join a session. You don't need to sit in the same place every time you come to class. Your seat selection is only for one session.

Online "virtual" classroom

Even if you sign in for an Instructor-Led Synchronous session delivered online, you may be prompted to indicate your seat.

Examples

When you're prompted, you might see a room layout that matches your surroundings, and you might see a box in which you enter your seat number. If your seats aren't numbered, you can locate your seat in the image on your device and tap or click to say you are sitting there.

How your instructor uses the seat map

Depending on the kind of question the class is responding to, your instructor can monitor answers as they are submitted and get a sense of how well the class as a whole is understanding the material. Your instructor might even see the prevalence of specific wrong answers (as in the number of red As below). This insight can help your instructor address misconceptions or devote additional time to a particularly thorny question.

Beyond this big picture, your instructor can display privately your name in the seat you are occupying, to get better acquainted and match names with faces.

Grouping for discussion

Possibly the most powerful benefit of using a seat map is the role it plays in intelligently grouping students quickly to discuss responses to a particular question. If your instructor sees that your class can benefit from brief, small-group discussions, Learning Catalytics can establish instant groups and send each student a message about the person(s) to speak to about the question. Don't be surprised to find classmates with responses different from yours in your group. That's the point. You each offer your reasoning for (or even confusion about) selecting your answer, and see if you don't come away with a clearer understanding of the question. Most likely your instructor will pose the same question following your discussions, and a lot of your will have learned something. Even students who responded correctly in Round One benefit from expressing their reasoning to the group.