FOR TEACHERS: STUdy 1

NExt Steps & Questions

If you are interested in having your 6th grade math classrooms participate, please complete this form: https://bit.ly/VT-Math

After you complete the form, our research team  (Dr. Caroline Hornburg, chornburg@vt.edu) will follow up with an email with more information including an official teacher consent form and also a parent letter for you to send home to the families of your students informing them of this research project. 

Feel free to email our research team at perceptualcues@gmail.com with any questions you may have!

for participating teachers

After you complete the interest form, our research team will follow up with more information. We will provide a parent letter for you to send home with your students to inform families of this research.

Research activities will occur in Virginia between October 2023 and April 2024. They will be scheduled depending on participating teachers' preferences. 

Participating teachers will assign a link to and supervise students while they complete a 45-minute online session in the classroom. 

The link will lead to a website where students will solve math problems about order-of-operations and answer some questions about their feelings towards math. 

How to ASSIGN THE ACTIVITY

Step 1: Make an ASSISTments Account with Google Classroom using these instructions. We use ASSISTments as a platform to run the study. 

Step 2: Assign the activity "PSABWZYK" to students in ASSISTments (Follow the "Assigning the Math Activity" instructions here). 

Step 3 (optional): Change settings in your ASSISTments account if you want to show students their report after completing the activity (look for step 5.3 in the "Assigning the Math Activity" instructions).

Step 4: Ask students to complete the activity during your math class - 45 minutes.

Step 5 (optional): Teachers can view their class report for the assignment in Google Classroom. There, you can find students’ responses and typical mistakes across all your students. Using the report is not required but is intended to be an available resource for you to assess students’ performance and inform instruction (find "Teacher Report" instructions and examples here). 

what students WILL do

Students will access the activity through a link on their Google Classroom account using a Google Chrome Browser. Students will not need to make ASSISTments accounts to participate in the study. 

The activity will take 45 minutes and includes several steps:

When students click the assignment to begin, they will be informed about the research activity and then will be asked if they agree to participate. If they select "Yes", their data will be included in this research. If they select "No", their data will not be used in this research. All students, regardless of their choice, will have the opportunity to participate in the learning activity. 

1. Students will complete an assessment of their prior order-of-operations knowledge and perceptual processing skills. 

2. Students will be randomly assigned one of three conditions (a congruent spacing, congruent color, or no perceptual cue condition) and solve a set of 16 order-of-operations problems.

3. Students will complete:

Example of how the order-of-operations problems will look:

More details on how the activity will look can be found in the "Student Experience Overview."

At the end of the activity, students may see a report of their performance (see here how student report will look) -- if their teacher opts to have their students view their reports (step 5.2 in "Assigning the Math Activity" manual).

Potential Benefits

Practice with Feedback

Students will practice on curricular content and get feedback on their performance.

Students' Performance Report

Teachers will have access to the report with their students’ individual responses and typical mistakes across all their students. Using this report is intended to be an available resource for participating teachers to assess students’ performance and inform their instruction.

Contribution to Research

Teachers and their students will be contributing to the current research on how perceptual cues can improve student performance in math and can be used to improve teaching practices.

Exploring Research and Data Visualization

If desired by participating teachers, our team will present the findings to the class after analysis and have a simple discussion with students about what an experiment is and how data can be visualized.

Presenting Generalized Findings

After all results have been analyzed, researchers can provide, researchers can provide a report detailing results, findings, and suggestions regarding how the use of perceptual cues can improve student performance in math.

Compensation

Participating teachers will receive a $100 Amazon gift card for providing the link to students and allocating 45 minutes of class time. Once you have assigned the activity and you have dedicated the 45 minutes of class time for students to complete it, please email us at perceptualcues@gmail.com to let us know. We will follow up with your gift card!