Success Story
Dr. Jan Zantinga is a Senior Lecturer in the Management Department at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. Dr. Zantinga utilizes PeerDoc and PeerPoll in his classrooms to elevate his student’s learning experience.
Challenge
Dr. Zantinga teaches various subjects including Project Management, Supply Chain Analytics and Service Operations. These courses heavily require feedback and knowledge tracking in order to increase transparency between the student and instructor. Additionally, Jan needs an environment where every student can actively learn and participate.
Customized Solution
Our team has partnered with Dr. Zantinga to take his classroom experience to the next level with Rampant systems; PeerDoc and PeerPoll. PeerPoll specifically helps with attendance and starting conversations with students throughout classes. Additionally, it provides a quick temperature check to see if students are comfortable with his explanations of a topic. The students also appreciate the quick feedback, so the students always know where they stand grade-wise. PeerDoc has been easily navigated even in large-scale classroom settings. After all students submit their projects, PeerDoc can randomly assign reviewers to groups and also has clickable rubrics to guide the students in giving structured/unstructured feedback to their peers on the spot.
“It is much easier to solicit feedback from students via text-like messages than asking them to raise their hand and single them out.”
Jan Zantinga, Senior Lecturer, University of Georgia
Results
Dr. Zantinga continues to use this adaptive classroom structure of PeerDoc and PeerPoll extensively to check in on students and where they stand in understanding the curriculum. These platforms have significantly improved one-on-one communication between students and Dr. Zantinga. Based on his experience, he has noticed that every student’s opinion and response is heard, versus hearing from only the same few students in every class. Not only does it bring diversity to classroom engagement, but it has allowed every single person in the class to have a role (either presenter or reviewer) during evaluations. This input from the students has given the instructor a data point in each evaluation, which has thus increased grading productivity.