After you have set up a Learning Catalytics course, notified students to confirm their access, and created a Synchronous module with questions, you're ready to deliver a session in class.
If you'll want to see who's sitting where and how they respond to questions, or if you'll want to take advantage of automatic grouping to discuss responses, you'll also want to have your course associated with a classroom seat map.
Whether your class takes place in a classroom or online, you'll want to ensure that the appropriate requirements are in place before you begin. If you haven't done so already, read these topics:
Overview: Learning Catalytics, particularly the Before you begin section
Enable Learning Catalytics for students
Note: For students who don’t have a device, you can supply a printed PDF version of the module questions. In the list of modules for a Learning Catalytics course, click in the row for the module, and then select Create PDF.
For classroom-based sessions, see How do I set up Learning Catalytics in the classroom?, which discusses options for classroom setup based on the equipment that is available to you (laptop, projector, and tablet or second laptop).
The article is appropriate for online sessions, as well, where you might consider displaying the student window on a second monitor on your desk, leaving your laptop screen free to display the instructor dashboard.
Unless you accidentally display it with your projector, students never see your instructor dashboard.
Open the course that contains the module you'll be using in class.
From the list of modules, open the module you will use.
Before you start the session you can preview the questions in the module using any of the navigation tools on the page.
When you're ready, click Start session.
Students who have signed in see on their devices the "Please wait" message.
(If you see a message about blocking pop-up windows, see How do I "unblock" pop-up windows? This should be a one-time action for Learning Catalytics on your computer.)
Drag the student window to the projector (visible in the classroom) or a second monitor (for your convenience during online delivery), if available.
Students never see your instructor dashboard.
For Synchronous modules, instructors find it useful to deliver a general survey question (with no correct answer) as students enter class.
You can monitor responses to this question as students wake up their devices and join the session.
Sample wake-up questions could include...
You can add a wake-up question when you create the module. Once you've started the session, simply open the question and click Deliver to push it to students' devices. Doing so also displays the question in the student window, if you're using a projector.
You can also add a timely question as soon as you start the session by clicking + Ask a question on the fly. See below for details.
Students using a smartphone or small tablet go to learningcatalytics.com and sign in with the Pearson username and password they used to enroll in your Mastering course. When prompted, they supply the session ID (the number in parentheses at the top of the student screen).
On a laptop or larger tablet, students can also sign in to your Mastering course and click Join Now to join a session.
When students have joined the session, they are prompted to identify the seat they occupy (if you have associated the course with a seat map), and then they see either the "Please wait" message or your first question, if you have delivered one.
To see how joining and participating in a session is described for students, see
You can deliver questions in ordered sequence or in any sequence you'd like, and you can return to previously delivered questions. Use any of the navigation tools on the page to select a question, and then click Deliver to push it to students' devices and display it in the student window, if you're using a projector for students or a second monitor for yourself.
The question remains available to students to respond, indicate confusion, change responses, and be assigned to groups to discuss until you click Stop delivery.
You can ask a new question at any point during a session for a Synchronous module.
Tip: An on-the-fly question becomes part of the module, which means students can review their answers and the correct answer after you stop the session.
Select a Question Type, Discipline, Prompt, and any other fields required for the type of question you are creating.
Keep in mind that you can edit this question later if you want to keep it for future use. You might want to add information such as feedback (which students see when they review the session), tags, or notes.
Reactions: If, in the course settings, you have enabled the "I don't understand" button and the real-time graph, you can click Reactions at the top of the instructor dashboard to display (and hide) a graph that shows when and how many students have indicated that they're confused.
The line automatically drops after a minute unless one or more students click "I don't understand" again.
If your course is associated with a seat map, you can use automatic grouping for students to engage in peer-to-peer instruction. So long as the question counter is still running for a question you have delivered (do not stop delivery), you can follow the steps below to form impromptu groups to discuss their responses to the question.
Select parameters for automatically forming groups.
Click Group and deliver to notify students of their group assignments and to make the question available for a second response.
As students respond again, you see the pre-discussion and post-discussion responses side by side, revealing whether discussions are changing student responses.
Note: For online sessions, students can establish chat rooms to discuss the question.
You can push the results to student devices and to the student window, if you are displaying it with a projector.
Click Show all results and select either:
Once the results are displayed, students can no longer change their responses.
Click Hide results on the instructor dashboard to return the question to delivery mode and allow students to respond again.
When students join a session, they see an option on their devices to send a message to the instructor. If a student sends a message, you see an indicator in the bottom left corner of the instructor dashboard.
You can do any of the following:
Don't forget to click Stop session to allow:
Student scores to be reported to the Learning Catalytics Gradebook, and optionally transferred to the Mastering Gradebook and to students' Scores pages.
The maximum possible points for a session is based on only the questions that were delivered in that session.
If class time runs out before you have delivered all the questions you want to cover, you can move the remaining questions into a different module for later delivery. See Add Learning Catalytics modules for information about copying and moving questions from one module to another.
Doing so prevents students from seeing the undelivered questions (and answers!) when they review this session.
Associate a classroom seat map with your course
Add a Learning Catalytics module
Find Learning Catalytics questions
Create your own Learning Catalytics questions
Student Help for Learning Catalytics (Click Back in the Student Help toolbar to return to Instructor Help.)