Tech for Classroom Engagement
In today’s educational landscape, technology plays a pivotal role in transforming higher education classrooms. Instructional technology enhances student engagement and fosters collaboration for improved learning experiences. This article presents available tools for in-person class and explains the benefits of incorporating backchannels, whiteboards, audience response polling, visual boards, and quizzing during synchronous classroom sessions. For other education tech, visit Available Software for Faculty and Staff or Available Software for Students.
Canvas Chat for Backchannels
Canvas Chat offers students a backchannel to ask questions or share thoughts freely during class.
Canvas Chat Learning Benefits and Considerations
- Backchannel behaviors already exist; live chat connects this behavior into the front channel of your session.
- Increases communication, decreases perceived risk of interruption, engagement can improve attendance.
- Give guidelines, such as comments must be session topic focused and academic in nature.
- Have a co-instructor or student moderate the backchannel to bring questions to the presenter's attention.
- Pause to check-in, address questions or comments, and encourage sharing of resources.
- Students must be enrolled in a Canvas course for access.
- Instructor must enable Chat on course menu for students to use it.
Canvas Chat References
MS Forms for Team-Based Learning
MS Forms assesses individuals and teams with unlimited attempts until they get the correct answer.
MS Forms Learning Benefits and Considerations
- Facilitates group assessment for team-based learning.
- Instant analytics to indicate if the class needs additional instruction.
- Present feature to review with the entire class and address misconceptions.
- Create complex questions and use branching to simulate clinical decision making.
- Have all students take the quiz individually as a pre-test.
- After iRAT, set the quiz to practice mode for tRAT.
- Can convert a Word document into a quiz.
- Available to all instructors and accessed through Cardinal Apps.
- Instructors can share links that either allow anyone to respond or require UIW sign in to respond in order to track student performance.
MS Forms References
MS Whiteboard for Visual Content Markup
MS Whiteboard allows students to collaboratively markup visual content on a shared whiteboard.
MS Whiteboard Learning Benefits and Considerations
- Allows students to visually indicate areas on diagrams or images they have questions about.
- Point
- Creates an artifact to study after class.
- Prepares students for assessments with hot spot questions.
- Practice helps develop drawing skills for smooth delivery of content.
- Ask the class to refrain from marking up images until prompted.
- Insert all images to be used for a unit of study.
- Use with MS Stream screen recorder for up to 15-min videos.
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OneDrive is integrated within Canvas for instructors and students to easily share or submit creations in Assignments.
MS Whiteboard References
Padlet for Group Discussions
Padlet supports small groups in documenting discussion points before the instructor shares the results back with the entire room.
Padlet Learning Benefits and Considerations
- Motivates students to participate during discussion time.
- Targets the "share" part of think-pair-share type activities.
- Facilitates the instructor in bringing group ideas back to the whole class.
- Creates an artifact to provide feedback.
- Instructors can make a Padlet link or QR code as well as integrate in a Canvas Assignment.
- Explore the templates to ensure your layout aligns with your intentions.
- Breakout Groups template works well for discussions.
Padlet References
Poll Everywhere for Formative Assessment and Competitive Reviews
Poll Everywhere prompts students to demonstrate understanding, share opinions, or compete during review sessions.
Poll Everywhere Learning Benefits and Considerations
- Use to confirm understanding before moving on to new topics.
- Requires individual attention and informs instructor of participation.
- Visualized results demonstrate audience misconceptions.
- Use Folders to stay organized by topic and can be converted into a quiz.
- Remind audience to limit Word Cloud responses to a single keyword for best results.
- Use ranking questions for differential diagnosis or skills steps.
- Use Q&A to collect class ideas for upvoting.
- Try competitions to allocate points for correct answers with an optional timer and leaderboard display.
- Once instructor has a presenter account, can create activities allowing anyone to participate.
Poll Everywhere References