Three Ways to Ask a Question

Great teachers understand the importance of feedback as part of effective teaching and learning. Feedback allows teachers to check understanding, get a sense of student opinions on a topic and encourages decision making. Feedback contributes to stimulating, lively learning. One way to get feedback is with a great question and in this post we look at three different ways to do just that - ask a question.

Hands Up

The tried and true approach since Grandma was a preschooler, hands up is great for all sorts of reasons, but may not give the most accurate responses. Students are inclined to vote with the majority, or at least with the first responders, and quieter students may not want to vote against the majority even though they are confident in their own answer.  If the question is based on a sensitive issue or involves students publicly identifying their personal beliefs, some may not feel comfortable displaying these in a public setting.

Clickers 

Clickers, which were all the rage a few years ago, and more recently polling software such as Poll Everywhere, can be feature filled and flexible, especially if class sizes are large (100+). The one major downside of clickers and polling software is that they rely on every student having either a clicker or mobile device. "My clicker's battery is flat", "I can't connect to the internet", What's the web address again?"..... you get the picture.

Plickers - Better than Clickers? 

Enter a really cool tool called Plickers,  the 2106 iteration of tech based mass questioning solutions. Yes, it has its limitations, but it certainly ticks many boxes for ease of use and practical features. Put simply, it's a polling tool that uses hand held QR codes and the teachers mobile device.

Why do we like it? Several reasons...

It's a low tech, high tech solution. Students do not need a device. Simply hand each student a printed QR Card from the free downloadable PDF on Plickers website.

Its flexible - Set up classes and questions prior to your lesson, or create them on the fly. Responses can be anonymous or tagged to individual students. Questions can be one-off or part of a running record. Results can be graphed, tabled and exported.

It's fun - Use it for assessment or just to add some competition to your class. You can display the results instantly, letting your class see how individuals answered, either anonymously, or if appropriate, by name.

It's Free!

How do you use it?
Hand out a QR card (they come as set in PDF form) with four response options on it to each student in class - get the students to hold the card up oriented on what answer they choose - scan the class with your mobile device using the free Plickers app - watch the responses get recorded on the screen as you go.

If you want to know more about this great tool, come over to The Qube and ask for a quick demo from one of the TEEL's or keep an eye out for upcoming workshops later this month.

A Snapshot of Moodle Usage

Our Learning Management System Moodle, is a key part of how we deliver online learning to students.
Google, through its analytics service, can provide us with an enormous amount of data on its usage, which allows us to identify patterns such as how many times users visit the site, what days and time of day are most popular, what the average length of each visit is and what type of device was used.

This data can help us make sure we are providing a service that fits the needs of its users. More importantly though, analytics can tell use about how successfully students are interacting with course content and whether they are progressing as expected or falling behind.

Here's a snapshot of a few statistics from 2015. Of interest is the 50% increase in mobile and tablet usage since last year. This increase is unlikely to slow in upcoming years and raises some interesting questions as to how we as educators, develop online communities and deliver online content to always connected, mobile learners.

You can hover over the image to see specific numbers.