Cignition and TeachFX: Elevating Students’ Online Tutoring Experience
Cignition, a leading figure in high-impact K-12 tutoring, has always aimed to foster deep conceptual understanding among learners. Their research-based approach emphasizes data-informed instruction and collaborative learning, promoting student-to-student interaction for enhanced understanding of math and literacy content.
However, with the rise in demand for high-impact tutoring, a key question emerged: How can Cignition ensure its innovative tutoring methods truly engage every student?
This is where TeachFX entered the equation.
TeachFX and Cignition share the belief that better access to data can improve tutoring quality and support student learning.
Our instructional coaching app provides Cignition tutors with holistic, objective data on student engagement and instructional practices.
TeachFX increased tutors’ awareness of their instructional practices and student participation
Cignition piloted TeachFX in their small group and 1:1 tutoring programs with a diverse group of students in a suburban/rural school district in the southeastern United States.
Tutors quickly and easily identified moments to celebrate and areas for tutor and student growth
Tutors gained a new, clearer view of their sessions with the TeachFX app – they could see an overview of student-tutor talk ratios, word clouds of the academic vocabulary tutors and students used most frequently, and insights into their use of specific high-leverage teaching practices.
Much like teachers in K-12 classrooms, Cignition’s tutors used TeachFX data to identify ways they’d like to adjust their own teaching style to better meet students’ needs. They ensured they used appropriate math vocabulary during sessions, worked on a specific high-leverage practice like wait time, and more.
For instance, word clouds of the most frequently spoken words by tutors and students helped tutors gauge the extent to which students used math vocabulary in sessions, and to adjust their instruction in future sessions accordingly.
And with TeachFX Featured Moments, tutors could quickly and clearly see the top five moments from a tutoring session - celebrating their own moments of effective instructional practices and students’ moments of high engagement.
Tutors were more aware of their use of wait time, increasing student talk and equity of student voice
Tutors who reviewed their TeachFX data identified their use of wait time — both after asking a question and after a student responded — as an area for their own growth.
We found a strong correlation between tutors’ use of wait time after a student spoke and the amount of student talk. Wait time is a proven high-leverage instructional practice that creates space for student voice and promotes active student participation.
In just three months, the program saw change in how students experience their own participation. Initially, 5% of students somewhat or strongly disagreed that they participate collaboratively in their sessions (by taking turns, listening to, and working with others). By the end of the program, all students surveyed agreed that they participate in this manner (81% strongly and 18% somewhat).
Tutors found that in addition to gathering objective data, simply using TeachFX helped them become more aware of how students engaged, which students’ voices were included, and which teaching practices they might use to increase both student engagement and equity of student voice.
For example: all tutor respondents noted efforts to reduce their talk time during sessions, including efforts to speak more slowly and more intentionally.
Ongoing learning and reflection powered authentic continuous improvement
Regular review of their TeachFX insights helped tutors identify effective questions and strategies that elicited student participation in tutoring sessions. They incorporated these strategies into future lessons to further boost student engagement and understanding.
Even busy tutors with multiple sessions per day found TeachFX insights to be an accessible, time-friendly way to regularly reflect on instructional practice. TeachFX summaries provided tutors with quick, informative reviews of sessions, providing new insights while also saving them valuable time.
Instructional leaders gained a new, holistic view of their program
Cignition program managers supervise tutoring programs in school districts across the country. Depending on the size of a tutoring program, Cignition program managers may oversee and support hundreds of tutors.
A key focus of their role is to ensure tutors use a student-centered, collaborative approach to learning.
To date, their only option has been the time-consuming approach of observing tutoring sessions, alongside reviewing Cignition’s post-session student engagement and feedback data.
With the TeachFX Administrator Dashboard, program managers can view aggregated TeachFX data across multiple tutors and tutoring sessions simultaneously.
The TeachFX Administrator Dashboard can provide leaders with aggregated data across multiple tutors and sessions, allowing an at-a-glance view of overall student talk trends, and use of high-leverage practices like wait time and questioning.
With hundreds of tutor supervisees, the dashboard can enable these leaders, in a sense, to observe more sessions than would otherwise be possible. That facilitates more data-informed conversations with district partners and makes data-informed considerations for specific instructional growth plans.
With TeachFX, Cignition tutors and leaders gained new insights into elevating tutors’ instructional practice and students’ engagement.
Using TeachFX in the 1:1 and group online tutoring setting, Cignition tutors gained insights that were inaccessible before.
With AI-generated instructional insights, tutors quickly and clearly saw their own student-tutor talk ratios, use of specific high-leverage teaching practices, academic vocabulary used by tutor and students, as well as equity of student voice.
Use of these insights by tutors, alongside aggregated insights for leaders who manage tutoring programs for schools and districts, have the power to elevate both tutor instructional practice and student engagement.
Administrators & Coaches
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