The Packback Blog

Recent Articles

Packback Webinar: Increasing Student Engagement in Any Size Course

In this webinar, Dr. Stephanie Tikkanen shares techniques on how she uses Packback to increase engagement in her 18, 100 and 400-student courses. She also discusses how the increased engagement led to more personal interactions in lecture halls, more visibility into students’ understanding of course material and helped spark student curiosity for the subject matter.

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Promoting Peer Interaction with Packback

Dr. David Munson of Texas A&M University explains how Packback solves a problem for in-class-based assignment structures because it gives students the power to interact with each other. He also explains how Packback helps students build rapport with their peers.

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Building Connections Through Academic Discussion

Dr. Paivi Hoikkala teaches upper-level online history courses at California Polytechnic State University, Pomona. Her primary goal, aside from getting her students to have a general sense of chronology, is to help them make connections between the past and the present.

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Improving Communication and Critical Thinking

Dr. Corey Fox of Texas State University wanted to find a way of improving communication and critical thinking skills in his management students. Dr. Fox decided to start using Packback in one of his courses and required students to ask and answer questions almost every week.

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Webinar: Student Participation and Final Grade Impact, on Packback vs. LMS discussion

In this webinar, Dr. Kathleen West of UNC Charlotte shares data from her study presented at the 2019 NITOP and ITC eLearning conferences. This study explores how Packback compares to other discussion methods, such as LMS discussion boards when it comes to improving students’ written scores, exam grades and participation.

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Using Academic Discussion to Encourage Reading

Dr. Bryan McCarthy teaches introduction and upper-level philosophy courses to non-majors at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg. He challenges his students to move beyond  memorizing theories and philosophers and to engage with readings and discussions that challenge the way they think.

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An Introduction to Feed Sorting and Section Small Groups with Packback CPO Jessica Tenuta

This spring Packback released two new features; Feed Sorting and Section Small Groups. Packback CPO Jessica Tenuta shares how these new features improve the visibility of online discussions and help students discover trending posts and unanswered questions.

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Product Feature: Section Small Groups

Packback has researched many ways of helping big classes feel more personal. Thanks to feedback from instructor users about the desire for more flexibility in subdividing communities, Packback developed Section Small Groups which allows students to participate with the entire class or filter their experience on Packback to only include students from their own section.

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Request a Demo of the Packback Questions Platform

Curious to learn more? One of our friendly strategy consultants will be excited to meet you and discuss your course learning objectives. We will provide a free consultation to see if Packback would be a good fit for your class!

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