How Imperial College gets value from using Mentimeter

March 08, 2017
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Shireen Lock, Senior Learning Technologist at Imperial College in London, writes about how they get value from using Mentimeter. She is responsible for the day to day running of Learning Technology activities.

Why Should I use an Audience Response System in my Classroom?

Audience response systems like Mentimeter are a great way to engage your students to achieve better results through more efficient learning. By using Mentimeter as a tool to make your teaching more interactive, both you and your students will benefit.

Audience response systems give the teacher a fun and innovative way of turning class knowledge or opinion into data, and you also create an opportunity for students to express their opinion anonymously. Often, a lecturer might explain something very complex, ask if everyone understands, and with only one student answering yes, the teacher continues the lecture with the rest not understanding fully.

How can you use Mentimeter in your classroom?

Formative assessment serves to monitor the aggregated understanding of your class. It is used to let you as a lecturer understand if the class has grasped a concept, and if you can move on. The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning on an aggregate level, this being used to let students find their owns strengths compared to the class as well as to give the lecturer an understanding if the class as a whole has grasped the concept.

Two examples of question themes for formative assessment are:

  • Control questions, e.g. “Who was the president of United States of America (USA) in 1962?”
  • Open ended question, e.g. “What was the reason for the start of the Korean war?”

Pop quiz with Mentimeter

While teaching, it’s always important to see if the students understand along the way. Mentimeter is a great tool to use to verify if the whole class is following the lecture. Asking openly if the class has understood, students might not want to raise their hand and declare that they don’t understand.

Since Mentimeter is anonymous, everyone can solve the problem on their own or in small groups before submitting their answer. You will then be able to see for yourself if the class is following the lecture.

Exit pass with Mentimeter

The basic idea behind an exit pass is that after a lesson, the students are asked to answer certain questions regarding that class, to let the teacher assess if the students have understood the contents. Previously, this has been done via post-its or on paper, but in today’s modern world with digital aids, this tool is brought to a new level. With Mentimeter you can ask open-ended questions such as: “Name three things you learned today”, “Name three questions you still have” , “If today’s lesson was a movie, what would it have been named?”, and, “The thing I’m going to share with my parents tonight are?”

About the author: Shireen Lock Shireen Lock is a Senior Learning Technologist at Imperial College in London. She is responsible for the day to day running of Learning Technology activities. Shireen manages the delivery of e-Learning Projects and promoting use of e-Learning across the Faculty of Engineering.

This text is an extract of a blogpost that was originally posted in www.emergingedtech.com. Read full length blog post here.

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