Revel at London South Bank University
This study investigated the use of Revel on an introductory research methods module taken by business Master’s students at London South Bank University.
Revel has been used on this module for one academic year and was implemented by the module leader Dr Carrie Rutherford as a tool to support student engagement.
The students on the course are full-time, postgraduates with a large proportion of them being international, with English as a second or other language.
Dr Rutherford has found that trying to read and digest both the recommended texts and the lecture slides can be a challenge for these students. An additional challenge for many of these international students is that this course is encouraging them to be creative, curious and develop their own interest in a topic; an approach to learning with which they are less familiar.
The key findings from this research were:
- Revel participation and engagement levels were high. We found that Revel has the potential to engage students across all levels.
- Dividing students into 3 levels of attainment we found that more students engaged in the lower two tiers: 56% of students with module grades below 80, versus 51% of the top tier students with grades above 80.
- Students who might be classed as ‘struggling’ spent a longer than average time on early assignments,
which indicates a good level of engagement. - In the Autumn session, 13% of students accessed Revel weeks after the module ended: the resource continued to be valuable to them in the follow-on module.
- Average time spent per assignment ranged from 24 – 68 minutes and students appear to have been motivated by the number of marks available.
“The students were very happy to get started on Revel, downloading the app. I think they liked the idea of Revel: they feel that we’ve supported them as a business school.”
– Dr Carrie Rutherford, Module Leader, London South Bank University