But What Do I Do with the Insights Data?

[becky_anderson]

In Achieve, you can see all sorts of data about your students, which is great--except when you are overwhelmed by data. Here is one brief example of what you could do with information gleaned about your students from our research team here at Macmillan:

After viewing Achieve Insights for your course or students, here are some ways you can leverage strengths-based approaches to share feedback with students: 

• Help students identify talents or tasks performed exceptionally well (1).
• Prompt students to consciously think about how to maximize performance in these areas of talent (1).
• Encourage students to engage in more adaptive thinking around their performance by asking them to reflect on a time when they were successful; What strengths or talents did they use during that time? How did they use their strengths during that time (2)?
• Focus student attention on resources available to them and their preferred future outcomes, rather than past histories or problems (3).
• Promote healthy self-acceptance and internalization of the fact that everyone is fallible, nobody’s perfect.  

References

1. Fredrickson, B. L., Tugade, M. M., Waugh, C. E., & Larkin, G. (2003). What good are positive emotions in crises? A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 365-376.
2. White, M. A.,  Waters, L. E. (2015). A case study of ‘The Good School:’ Examples of the use of Peterson’s strengths-based approach with students. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(1), 69-76.
3. Warburton, D. E. R., & Bredin, S. S. D. (2019). Health benefits of physical activity: A strengths-based approach. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 8(12), 1-15.