The Pinch Point: Student Engagement with Written Content

In every course, across all subjects, students are constantly given written material they are supposed to read and learn from. Books, chapters, worksheets, papers, instructions, articles, and even syllabi all fall on students’ plates. When tasked with a sea of assigned course documents, it can be easy for reading to turn into skimming and skimming to turn into a quick overview. This may not surprise instructors who have asked themselves, “how do I know my students are actually reading this?”.

It doesn’t help that reading by itself is a passive learning activity. Well-intentioned students trying their best can reread paragraphs repeatedly without retaining key points. They may still be struggling with the “hidden syllabus” of college and are in the process of learning how to study effectively. 

How can instructors help students learn better from written material? This is an especially important question to consider for courses with unique literature types, like scientific papers or poems; how can a student who is new to college and has never read this structure of writing before navigate this reading? Additionally, for instructors who are familiar with being repeatedly asked the same question by multiple students, how can faculty build accountability into readings?

The Solution: PlayPosit

With PlayPosit, you can turn any reading into a worksheet with embedded interactions. As students scroll through the document, they will be required to answer questions, guaranteeing that they have engaged with particular content. Unlike physical worksheets, digital worksheets have the option of being auto-graded.

For students, digital worksheets with PlayPosit support learning by requiring active engagement and providing immediate feedback, which learners can use to self-assess and support metacognition. For instructors, these assignments support teaching by providing a way to build accountability into readings and monitor student learning, serving as an early alert system. These digital worksheets can serve as low-stakes pulse checks to inform instructional next steps (like outreach or confidence that students are making progress) without waiting for more permanent assessment results.

By providing the opportunity to build accountability and active learning into reading assignments, PlayPosit is another way for instructors to embody CSUCI’s responsibility to be “student-ready” rather than penalizing students for not being “college ready.”

STEM Specific: Interactive Primary Literature

As any instructor who teaches courses with scientific papers knows, students (novices in the structure of a discipline) can easily get lost in the cryptic structure and the overwhelming amount of information in primary literature. Novices carry a heavy cognitive load; they are simultaneously learning both the “information” and the “language of the discipline,” which means they may not accurately identify the main points.

But the benefits of incorporating primary literature in a science course can’t be ignored. Not only does reading scientific papers help students understand course content, but it also exposes them to the actual practice of science and helps them develop the skills to engage with the discipline as actual practitioners. These effects can motivate students by serving as evidence that they are indeed part of the real-life STEM field. However, if students struggle to manage the content, they may mistakenly interpret this as a sign they don’t belong in college. Showing students how your discipline works sets them up for long-term success and builds their capacity to navigate future courses, supporting persistence.

With PlayPosit, instructors can give students a helping hand when it comes to tackling scientific papers by using interactions to break down the structure of literature and adding guiding questions that draw students’ attention to the main points in a forest of details.

Example: Give it a Try

Explore the example, PlayPosit Digital Worksheet: Learning About the Ozone with Primary Literature, to get a glimpse of what PlayPosit can do for your course. This example, featuring a scientific paper and guided questions, is best viewed in full screen on a Google Chrome browser.

To Sum it Up

Turning readings into interactive worksheets in PlayPosit is a double-pronged approach to benefit both instructors and students. Instructors can rest easy with the guarantee that students have interacted with required aspects of the reading, skip the grading, and go straight to analyzing data to inform their next instructional move. Students, guided by interactions, retain information better when engaged and are more supported by the added structure and accountability. 

Feeling Inspired?

Here are a few other ways to consider using PlayPosit to increase engagement and transparency in your written material:

• Consider creating an interactive syllabus assignment at the beginning of the semester. Include questions about due dates, grading, and community ground rules that students must answer while skimming through the syllabus, ensuring all learners in the course begin the semester prepared with key information. This can also be done with the how-to instructions for more complicated keystone assignments with various parts and due dates. 
• Add multiple choice, check all, or fill-in-the-blank interactions quizzing students on the most frequently misunderstood aspects of the reading. These interaction types are automatically graded and give students immediate feedback, serving as a way to self-check and keep learners on track. As an added bonus for the instructor, grades will easily sync from PlayPosit to Canvas. Learn more about the role of feedback on student learning with this 20-minute OneHE course, Improving Feedback In Asynchronous Online Courses*, which is relevant even if your course isn’t asynchronous or online.
• To further explore the specific challenges of digital readings, check out the 25-minute OneHE course, Teaching Digital Reading*. As you go through the course, consider how PlayPosit digital worksheets could benefit students. 

*Requires a OneHe account to access.

*CI Faculty who do not have an account should complete the OneHE interest form to request the OneHE registration form to activate their account. Once you’ve activated your account, you’ll be able to sign in and access the content.

Let’s Connect!

Thinking about incorporating PlayPosit into your existing teaching practice? We have resources to support you getting started, so you can spend less time on the “how-to” and more on teaching.

• Check out our Knowledge Base for a step-by-step guide on creating interactive documents in PlayPosit to try it out independently.
• Schedule a meeting with a Learning Designer to get one-on-one support, ask questions, and brainstorm ways to tailor PlayPosit to your course.
• Sign up for our hybrid workshop on March 29, 2023, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM to get hands-on help using PlayPosit.

What ideas do you have for using PlayPosit to create interactive worksheets? We want to hear from you! Comment below to share your thoughts.