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At the Casual Academic Conference Technology Showcase, Learning Design and Technology Specialists Olivia and Anna looked at how two of these tools, Mentimeter and Poll Everywhere, look like in practice.

Recap

How can we ever decide who is the best Disney Princess? Or find out which Pixar films you can remember? Well, by polling the audience!

If you missed this showcase, here’s a recap, Olivia and Anna looked at how Mentimeter and Poll Everywhere could be used to:

  • poll an audience
  • collect answers in a word cloud
  • gauge audience members’ opinions of Disney villains using a sliding scale
  • identify a Pixar character from an image
  • to encourage active learning and feedback in your class

Polling tools can be used to prompt discussion in large classes by showing you what students are thinking in real-time data visualisations. Students can anonymously let you know if they understand a topic, what the muddiest point was or if they have a particular question. This quick gathering of feedback from students can then allow you to respond to the whole class and tailor your teaching to the cohort’s answers.

By asking students to anonymously respond using technology you can also collect answers from those students in your class less likely to call out the answer, getting a better sense of your entire class, rather than just a few vocal students.

Both Mentimeter and Poll Everywhere offer free signup options and offer a straightforward polling tool.  However, both have slightly different considerations to keep in mind:

  • Mentimeter will only allow you to use two questions per session (that is per unique access code), however, it does allow unlimited participants to answer, so it is great for those monster lectures!
  • Poll Everywhere acts in the opposite, where you are limited to 40 participants, though you can have unlimited questions per session.
  • Both will allow you to export results with some differences in format, and both let you embed your polls using iFrames and plugins.

Try out some poll types from Mentimeter below:

 

Session information

More articles on lx.uts.edu.au:

Attend a follow up session Wednesday 26th September by registering here.

This post is adapted from a presentation for the LX.lab Technology Showcase, part of the 2018 Casual Academics Conference. Check out more resources from the Technology Showcase here.

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