“It was all unicorns and rainbows”. That was the half-joking response of Dr. Greg Mayer, Academic Professional Associate in Georgia Tech’s School of Mathematics, when asked what his initial reactions were when first using Crowdmark.
Dr. Mayer has a long history of innovative pedagogy, marked by his involvement in Georgia Tech’s Dual Enrollment high school math program. This interest in innovation was what drew him to Crowdmark, as he believed the platform could help his teaching teams spend less time on administrative tasks and more time helping students excel in their studies.
As he began using Crowdmark to manage his midterms and tests, Dr. Mayer found that he was not only saving time for his teaching team, but that he was able to leverage Crowdmark’s Assigned Assessment feature to provide extra support for students in need:
“I was able to identify students that are struggling in the course, to give them an opportunity to do assigned assessments (digital homework) as a way of giving them a little bit more feedback”.
He could assign homework to students who needed extra credit to pass the course, enabling them to graduate on time.
In addition to the time savings Crowdmark provided, he also learned that he could increase the rigor of his tests by assigning each of his teaching assistants to different questions. Doing so enabled him to incorporate more complex questions into his tests as each grader could develop a system for grading a particular problem:
“Crowdmark allowed us to give more robust exams that test our students at the level we need to test them at. We’re no longer confined by the administrative component of exams, so we can write better exams that test them on things they need to be able to understand…It’s also enabled me to think about how to redesign my assessments to leverage technology in ways I haven’t seen before with things on paper. One question can be assigned to one teaching assistant, rather than having them grade everything on the page. It’s more efficient and allows me to do more creative things with my exam.”
Dr. Mayer’s students also appreciate getting their midterms back more quickly, moving from an average turnaround time of two weeks to one week. His colleagues similarly find success with Crowdmark, and are currently using it to run tests and exams for their core Multivariate Calculus course.
“It’s a lot easier doing it on Crowdmark than on paper”, laughed Dr. Mayer. “It’s been awesome!”
Dr. Mayer was interviewed by Lawrence Williams, Customer Success Manager, Crowdmark.