A Polling-at-Home Approach to Improving Students' Learning Performance

Abstract

Plenty-of-Time Teaching (PoTT) is a teaching strategy adopted by teachers to better understand students' learning status through pre-class activities in order to facilitate adjustments to teaching methods. Extending the concept of PoTT, the goal of this study is to explore the impact of Plenty-of-Time Learning (PoTL) on students' self-regulation, test anxiety, cognitive engagement, and learning performance. Participants were 167 students enrolled in an introductory educational psychology class in which the instructor used either PoTL or Just-in-Time Learning (JiTL) strategy. Students who adopted the PoTL strategy engaged in BlackBoard polling question-and-answer activities that helped teachers understand the overall learning status of the students. The study results indicated that the PoTL strategy enhanced student performance. We recommend that when using PoTL in the future, teachers can open up an online discussion platform to help students not only better understand their own learning situation but also improve their learning strategies.