Interactive tools in teaching at the University of Brighton

Recently, staff from the University of Brighton attended (and presented) at the Global Festival of Active Learning, run by the Active Learning Network (ALN). The event offered a diverse range of interesting activities that could be included within your teaching, in order to engage and motivate students with the topic materials.

Providing learners with active learning strategies allows you to:

• Check students understanding of the current topic
• Allow students to reflect on their current understanding
• Provide opportunities for collaboration, discussion and demonstration of critical thinking skills.

This short blog post aims to cover some example of how you can use digital tools at the University of Brighton to promote active learning in your teaching. These activities cover both ‘in-class’ and self-directed activities.

 

Polling/Idea Generation

Quickly gathering thoughts, opinions and suggestions from students can be a great discussion starter, as well as a providing agency to students to contribute and shape the delivery of the session.

There are many ways to do this with digital tools. For simple opinion polls (e.g. likert scale), both Microsoft Forms and Padlet offer the ability for students to respond with their mobile devices, with results displayed on screen immediately. These can provide a great conversation starter, as students may want to vocalise their rationale for their answer.

Microsoft Forms also offers a ‘word cloud’ option when a free-text question is offered to students, allowing you to quickly summarise students responses to a question.

For idea generation, or thought-sharing, Padlet allows students to ‘post’ notes to a digital board, instantly creating a useful resource board that can be accessed by students even after the session has finished. Students can also vote or ‘like’ each others posts, allowing them to evaluate the responses.

 

Collaborative activities

Getting students to work collaboratively as a whole group, or in smaller groups, can be a really great way to encourage students to share ideas, foster positive working relationships and increase learning.

Padlet offers a platform for students to collaboratively add and discuss materials. For example:

• Asking a group to research different aspects of a problem, adding the digital resources they’ve found to a Padlet board. Students could then discuss the resources, and even comment/reflect on the quality of some of the materials.
• Asking a group to collaboratively produce a timeline of events – again you can set up a basic timeline (Padlet has a template for this) and then each student can add an event, with any supporting resources.
• For new students, Padlets can be used as a digital ‘welcome’ board, where each student writes a piece about themselves, introducing themselves to their new classmates.

Alternatives: Office 365 offers solutions for students to work collaborative within documents, such as Word or PowerPoint files.

An example Padlet board, asking learners to consider challenges faced with blended learning approach to teaching. 

 

Quizzes

Quizzes are a great way for students to check their understanding of a topic – and Microsoft Forms is a really simple tool to deliver this. You can create a short quiz in minutes, and then deliver this as a link on My Studies (for in-class quizzing, you could display a QR code on your slides). You can easily see the students progress within your Forms account, allowing you to quickly judge if any particular questions have troubled students. You can also include images, video and even ‘branching style’ quizzes for more complex simulation type activities.

Alternatives: My Studies also has a Test tool for delivering quizzes to students.

A few suggested uses:

• Create diagnostic/pre-topic quiz to assess learners base understanding before starting a topic.
• Create post-topic quizzes allowing students to check their understanding
• Students can also use Microsoft Forms – perhaps ask students in groups to create quizzes for each other!

Peer Review

Fostering the ability to make (and take!) constructive criticism is a valuable graduate skill, and peer review activities are an opportunity to really develop this skill with your students.

The My Studies assignment tool has a peer review option. This has two distinct stages:

• First, students submit something (this can be some text, uploaded files, images, video etc)
• Once the deadline has been reached, the evaluation period begins. Students can then peer review a predetermined number of student submissions, based on guidance/criteria you have provided them. They can leave feedback on their peers work. The entire process is anonymous for students, although instructors have full transparency throughout.
• Instructors can also formally mark the submissions and provide feedback, if required.

Alternatives: Padlet also offers a more simpler route, where students can add their contribution to a Padlet board (anonymously or not) and their peers can comment and start discussions about each others responses.

 

What about other tools?

 

The tools mentioned in this blog are ones licensed and supported by University of Brighton for its staff and students. There are of course many other tools available for interactive teaching. We have a page here for University of Brighton staff that discusses using other tools not licensed by the university.

 

Conclusion

Adding interactive activities into teaching sessions can be a great way to engage students and reinforce knowledge. For University of Brighton staff, we have upcoming workshops on using Padlet, QR Codes and Microsoft Forms for interactive teaching – the dates can be found on our IT Workshops page. We also have pages on how university staff can access Microsoft Forms and Padlet with their university accounts.