In addition to the Deep Dives essay writing and grade assessing platform, Instruct will increase professor and student functionality, by providing in-site Discussion Polls, Insights Dashboard, and our Match and Message tool all in one place! With Deep Dives Instruct, instructors are able to continue inspiring student's curiosity and receive data reports around their participation, all while also hosting live in-class polls, and sending personalized messages to students all through Packback platform.
Why we added Instruct to Deep Dives
This was originally only added to Packback Questions, our discussion based courses. But by adapting these same features to our essay platform, Deep Dives Instruct still consolidates writing assignments & activities by incorporating all of your student engagement needs through one single platform, while encouraging Packback's principles of inquiry-based learning. This puts the control back in your hands with more autonomy over student engagement, while reducing the number of hours that student interaction takes from your daily schedule!
How do you access your Deep Dive Insights Dashboard?
The interactive insights dashboard is one of Deep Dives Instruct's key features. This tool will help you understand what is happening inside of your Packback community by helping you to identify trends of when students are most and least engaged and students who are consistently struggling (or improving).
Navigating your Insights Dashboard
Like on Packback Questions, you can now access the Interactive Insights Dashboard from the sidebar navigation, by clicking "Insights Dashboard".
Once in the Insights Dashboard, you'll be able to toggle between two Insight groups (Community Insights and Student Insights).
Community Insights
The community insights dashboard allows you to track by “All Time” or by each individual Deep Dive Assignment. Filtering by "All Assignments" will help you monitor trends in your overall submission time and average assessment score.
For example, the Community Insights dashboard allows instructors to see:
- Submission time and Average Score for all Deep Dive Assignments throughout course
- See grade trends between essay assignments by tracking how well your students followed rubrics by observing their word count requirement trends, if they properly cited their sources, and how well they structured their work.
- Submission time and Average Score for individual Deep Dives throughout the course
- See grade trends within each essay assignment by tracking how well your students followed the rubric by their time of submission, if they properly formatted their writing, and how well they used grammar
Student Insights
Under the Student Insights tab, for each Deep Dive, you will be able to see:
- Which students have submitted
- Which students have not yet submitted
- Compare the progress between the two Deep Dive assignments
Each of these different insights will show a different recommended action in the sidebar that ties directly to Match & Message, which you can even access at the bottom of the Insights Page:
Insights Dashboard Best Practices
Below are a few examples of how you can best utilize your interactive insights dashboard:
Option 1:
Use Community Insights to track if assignment scores "spiked" or "dipped" on specific weeks as a way to understand if students were more or less engaged with an essay.
Option 2:
Use Community Insights to drill down into individual Deep Dives to see which students have not yet started their drafts. This could be used to inform when you send feedback (to encourage earlier participation) or even to set the most effective deadlines next term.
Option 3:
Use Community Insights to see if submission time and assessment score average is trending up or down over time. If it's trending down, you might consider:
- Reminding students to begin their essays long before the deadline
- Posting an in-class poll or instructor prompt
- Using Match & Message to re-engage non-participating students
Still Have Questions?
If you have any other questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to our Support Team by filling out our Request Form or reaching out to help@packback.co.