Scott used Mentimeter (an online polling tool) in the classroom pre-COVID to engage students and develop a dialogue. With the pivot to online, Scott employed Menti during synchronous webinar teaching to help reduce the “transactional distance” (remoteness) with students. Through Menti, Scott builds a sense of community with his class. A range of feedback options allows Scott and his students to interact through polls and text feedback activities, increasing dialogue between student and teacher. Whilst Scott has so far used the free version, you can now get a licence from the University for the full software.
Tools: Mentimeter with video conferencing software
Full story and demo
In the video presentation below, Scott outlines a variety of uses of Mentimeter and demonstrates how it can be used, for example to ask questions in lectures to help students reflect on feedback. Scott even uses Menti in a mock courtroom scenario in gateway teaching sessions.
One option is to use Mentimeter as a slideshow, and through this you can allow continual interactivity (chat, thumbs up and down) as well as designing specific question and polling slides for specific activities. Scott uses likert scales to test agreement, free text word cloud slides to show whole class feedback, as well as free text responses to gather questions.
The presentation below, taken from a staff workshop on digital tools, is 11 minutes long.
Tips
- You can use Menti slides to build and deliver your entire presentation. Scott prefers to flip between PowerPoint and Mentimeter.
- On your own laptop, you can add a plugin that allows you to display Mentimeter within PowerPoint, The plugin is not available on university lecture room podium PCs.
- Anonymity is a double-edged sword. It encourages contribution but risks inappropriate posts. You can use Mentimeter so that you can see comments on your own device before you share with the class.
- If there are too many questions, or ones that are tricky to answer on the spot, you can always answer them after the session, eg by email or adding a resource to Blackboard.