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Confident Questions:

How Compliment EDU and UVU’s Outstanding Professor of the Year increased student test scores by 10%

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The Problem

The cold, hard truth about the student experience is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ask questions. According to research conducted by the Scientific American, children as young as 7-years-old have come to equate asking a question with weakness, and they fear raising their hand in class because they may be perceived as stupid by their classmates. What's an even colder, and harder truth is that this ingrained behavior follows us all the way to college and beyond. A 2021 study from the National Library of Medicine found that ~73% of students hesitated to ask a question due to anxiety and this often disproportionately impacts women and people of color.

Tyler Standifird, Associate Professor of Biomechanics at Utah Valley University, saw this growing problem in his classroom. Rather than raising a hand when they needed help, his students seemed embarrassed, anxious, and in constant fear of asking “dumb” questions. He estimated that at least 60% of his students failed to raise their hands, despite having questions. Tyler, in turn, was left with a different kind of anxiety: how could he properly prepare his students for exams if he didn’t know where his students lacked understanding? 

“To see a 10% jump in test scores is insane. I know Compliment is a big part of that.”

Tyler Standifird
Associate Professor of Biomechanics
The Test

Over the course of 2 semesters, Fall 22’ & Spring 23’, Tyler partnered with Compliment EDU to see if he could encourage his class to ask more questions. Compliment EDU enables students to quickly and anonymously ask questions simply by scanning a QR code. At the end of each lecture, Tyler showed the Compliment QR code to his class and encouraged them all to pull out their phones to scan the code. After scanning, students saw a single prompt: “What questions do you have from today’s lecture?” Without needing to log-in or create an account, students started asking questions right away, leaving Tyler with a repository of topics that students needed help with. He could then start the next lecture by addressing those questions.

The Results

Over the course of just a a few months Tyler saw impressive results in the classroom. In the decade of teaching these classes he started getting questions that had never been asked before. “Some were very very basic questions over and over again. Things that I thought would be obvious based on the material, but that were not obvious.” Tyler continues “The anonymity and ease of the app allowed students to ask basic understanding questions that they never would feel comfortable asking in the past and these were questions that needed to be asked and answered”.

Recognizing what was on students’ minds enabled Tyler to tailor his curriculum to meet the real-time needs of his class. By responding to the students needs Tyler began to see an increase in test scores as much as 10%. After his semester using Compliment EDU, Tyler said, “To see a 10% jump in test scores is insane. I know Compliment is a big part of that.”

“The anonymity and ease of the app allowed students to ask basic understanding questions that they never would feel comfortable asking in the past and these were questions that needed to be asked and answered”

Tyler Standifird
Associate Professor of Biomechanics
The Solution

A little more detail on how Compliment EDU works - Compliment EDU relies on App Clip technology to facilitate anonymous feedback. Using an App Clip is a bit like a magic wand for your smartphone. Normally, when you want to use an app, you have to download and install the whole thing, which can take up space and time. But with App Clips, you can instantly use a tiny part of an app, just like a sneak peek. So, to use Compliment EDU in the classroom, students don’t need to download another app to ask questions - instead, they simply take a picture of the Compliment-provided QR code and ask a question instantly and anonymously.  After they ask their questions, Compliment EDU closes from their phones without any follow up emails or texts, and the professor can access all of the results right on their own device.

So why use Compliment EDU?

  1. Our App Clip technology is 100% anonymous: Professors using our app agree that the anonymous factor alone is worth the price. Protect your students' privacy and empower them to ask questions with confidence  with Compliment EDU

  2. Our ease of use is unmatched: For students the process takes under a minute and doesn’t require another app download or login. For teachers, the responses are collected in real time and available in the app. It’s elegantly simple.

  3. Our results are instantly applicable: When you know where your class lacks understanding, you can design your lectures to meet the learning needs of your students.

We know that when a student feels safe and free from embarrassment, they are more likely to ask a question. Not only does Compliment EDU offer a completely safe method for asking questions, but the process is the fastest, easiest, and most efficient method for gathering feedback that exists in education tech. 

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