What is Classmate?
Classmate is a tool that enables teachers to manage groups of students doing Cochrane Crowd activities. It provides additional features such as monitoring student activity and accuracy, setting up challenges and competitions, and the ability to focus on health domain areas of interest.
Classmate offers both a free and a premium version for those who want a more immersive experience and to dive deeper into their students' progress.
What is available in the free version?
Educators can track progress, measure accuracy, and create an engaging, data-driven learning experience.
Take a look at what our free version has to offer:
✓ Live accuracy feedback on pre-assessed records
✓ A constant record supply
✓ Basic reporting capabilities
Free tasks:
✓ RCT Identification
This task was our first task on Cochrane Crowd. The aim is to identify reports of randomized (or quasi-randomized) controlled trials. The records are presented to you as titles and abstracts. All you have to do is read the record and decide whether you think it is describing or reporting a randomized controlled trial (RCT). There is a training module consisting of practice records that must be completed first. We estimate the training will take around 20 minutes to complete.
Free learning activities:
✓ Key Steps in a Systematic Review
This learning activity introduces you to a systematic review. It includes four bite-sized training modules and will familiarize you with some of the key steps for producing a systematic review. We estimate this activity will take around one hour to complete.
What is available in the premium version?
The premium subscription to Classmate is an upgrade to the existing Classmate platform, designed to support evidence synthesis training with everything in the free subscription and more.
Take a look at what’s also included in premium:
✓ Topic prioritization
✓ Custom learning pathways
✓ New activities
✓ Detailed reporting features:
Total number of participants, items found, and records screened
Mean of records assessed by group
Mean accuracy of the group as well as accuracy of each individual within the group (overall accuracy, sensitivity and specificity)
Trend metrics: detecting improvement over time
Downloadable in PDF or CSV format
What additional tasks are available with the premium plan?
✓ DTA Identification
This task is quite challenging and generally not recommended for beginners unless they have a particular interest in diagnostic tests. The goal is to identify diagnostic test accuracy studies. All the records used for this task come from PubMed. You’ll be given the title and abstract of a study, and your job will be to decide whether it is describing a diagnostic test accuracy study. A training module is available and is estimated to take around 25 minutes to complete.
✓ PICO Extract
This task is ideal for anyone learning about the Population, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome (PICO) framework. You’ll be shown the title and abstract of a study, and your role is to determine whether it describes a randomized or quasi-randomized trial. If it does, you’ll then extract its key PICO elements. There are three training modules for this task; each one is expected to take around 25 minutes to complete.
What additional learning activities are included in the premium plan?
✓ Key Concepts in Health Research
This learning activity is made up of seven bite-sized training modules. Each micro-module introduces an important concept that helps you understand what constitutes a fair comparison. They are designed to take only 5 to 10 minutes each to complete. These micro-learning modules are a fantastic introduction to some key concepts. We estimate that this activity will take around one hour to complete.
✓ Study Design for Complete Beginners
This activity consists of seven bite-sized training modules that introduce key concepts for understanding common study designs from case reports to randomized controlled trials. We estimate this activity will take around one hour to complete.
✓ Introduction to CONSORT
This activity introduces you to consolidated standards of reporting trials (CONSORT), specifically the reporting requirements for titles and abstracts of randomized controlled trials. This activity should take around one hour to complete.
✓ Introducing Health Equity
This learning activity introduces you to key concepts for understanding health equity through seven bite-sized training modules. We estimate this activity will take around one hour to complete.
What are the pathway options in the premium subscription?
✓ The Student Pathway
This pathway is designed for students and includes seven learning activities and tasks that must be completed in order. We estimate the student pathway will take approximately 10 hours to complete.
- Key Concepts (seven micro-modules, each focused on an important concept)
- CT ID (identifying randomized trials from ClinicalTrials.gov)
- RCT ID (identifying randomized trials from biomedical databases)
- Screen4Me (a chance to screen the search results for a Cochrane systematic review)
- Study Design for Complete Beginners (seven micro-modules about different study designs)
- PICO Extract (extracting PICO characteristics from RCTs)
- Introduction to CONSORT (all about reporting standards for RCTs)
✓ The Newcomer Pathway
Five activities comprise the Newcomer pathway, designed for individuals new to health research and evidence-based medicine. It takes approximately 5 hours to complete the pathway.
- Key Concepts (seven micro-modules, each focused on an important concept)
- CT ID (identifying randomized trials from ClinicalTrials.gov)
- Study Design for Complete Beginners (seven micro-modules about different study designs)
- Introduction to CONSORT (all about reporting standards for RCTs)
- RCT ID (identifying randomized trials from biomedical databases)
✓ Build your own pathway
Create your own bespoke pathway tailored to your teaching preferences using a combination of learning tasks and activities available in Classmate.
Already favoured by many as a fun way to supplement teaching activities, Classmate can help you bring research into the classroom and give your students a practical, hands-on experience with meaningful impact.
I love the fact that it’s real-world work. My students appreciate that they’re actually contributing, and the more exposure they get to reading research abstracts, the better.
If you're going to be a consumer of research, it seems like a fantastic way to upskill. Quickly looking at abstracts, determining what the study design is, what the population was, all these sorts of things, which just seems amazing.
When I see a student whose accuracy levels are falling, I can look and try and understand better what they're having trouble with so that I can have a meeting with them and help coach them through.
