Overview
Know Your Students (KYS) is a web application developed to help instructors plan and execute their courses, achieve greater equity of learning and grades, and improve the inclusiveness of large classes. KYS presents aggregate student demographics and academic data at the course level as well as student testimonials about their background and experience at UC Davis. It also provides ways to survey students in a course, examine inequities at the assignment level, and reflect on the language used in recorded lectures.
KYS was developed with funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence initiative. It was developed and is maintained by Matt Steinwachs, Assistant Director, Center for Educational Effectiveness.
Intended impacts
We hope that the information presented in KYS will inspire empathy and, ideally, will motivate and help guide course change efforts that improve overall student learning and equity.
Access
All users only have access to the courses they have taught. Any instructor who would like access to the full set of charts and visualizations showing demographic information about the students you teach, as well as historical grade gaps, can schedule a consultation with the developers and education specialists at CEE by submitting a request for "Know Your Students Additional Access" (click here to schedule a consultation).
KYS is not for department chairs, deans, administrators, other instructors, or anyone else to measure or judge performance.
NEW! Know Your Students Support for Learning Outcomes Assessment
Know Your Students has added features to support learning outcomes assessment with any assignments graded in Gradescope. It allows instructors to observe characteristics of student learning without spending time writing scripts or messing with spreadsheets. By making the data processing easier, it takes less time to observe students’ demonstration of specific skills and knowledge at mid-quarter. The formative assessment data can then identify areas that might need additional instruction or review.
First, a page asks instructors to enter their course learning outcomes and the levels of mastery (aka performance levels). This information can then be downloaded as a file that is used subsequently, can be saved for future quarters, and can be shared with anyone interested in assessing the same learning outcomes. Though the page was created with program learning outcomes in mind, it will also work with course learning outcomes.
A second page allows instructors to upload the learning outcomes previously entered, along with an export of scores from any assignment graded in Gradescope. Instructors can then link questions from the assignment to the learning outcomes they are associated with, as well as the points that correspond to each level of mastery. After linking questions, the page will calculate the degree of mastery attained by each student for each learning outcome and generate some simple graphs and a spreadsheet export.
All the data uploaded by instructors is kept local within the browser. Nothing is saved to the Know Your Students server. No additional data is added to the data instructors provide. These new pages can be accessed using the "Learning Outcomes" dropdown in the navigation bar at the top of every page in Know Your Students. If you have questions about how to use these new features or ideas to improve them, you can contact [email protected]. For support with program learning outcome assessment, contact [email protected].
Contact
We want to hear about the ways instructors are using KYS to inform their teaching!
Development of KYS is driven by the feedback we receive from instructors. If you have an idea for a new chart or tool that you would like to see added to KYS please contact Matt Steinwachs at [email protected]. We look forward to working with you!
Feature article
Web App Helps Instructors Know Large Classes
Purpose To Address Inequities in Learning
"Before instruction begins this fall, Laci Gerhart will give herself a head start in meeting the more than 900 students she will teach in two sections of an introductory biology course.
The associate professor of teaching in the Department of Evolution and Ecology will review her classes in Know Your Students, or KYS, a campus-grown tool that offers UC Davis instructors de-identified data on their students ..."
Read the full feature by Julia Ann Easley | September 10, 2024