Mentimeter for Everyone at The University of York
The University of York has been using Mentimeter during the pandemic and beyond to provide students and lecturers with the right interactive tools to create engaging sessions for everyone. The university has substantially increased its Menti usage and now has an Enterprise Campus-Wide offering, where every lecturer and student can access Menti.
Throughout 2020-21 a major challenge for lecturers at The University of York was to engage with students in live remote teaching sessions. To tackle this challenge, many of their lecturers used Mentimeter to be inclusive with their students. Part of the success of this method was being able to provide their students with flexible opportunities online and giving them the chance to contribute anonymously.
Their students and staff have found Menti’s interactive features useful for remote learning during the pandemic. When returning to campus, it has also continued to be valuable in promoting high engagement in the physical classroom. According to the university, Mentimeter can play a significant role in making blended learning successful.
Since the fall of 2021, Mentimeter has been available online and on-campus for all staff and students at The University of York, as part of them signing up for Mentimeter Enterprise campus-wide. That has enabled 583 staff members to create over 5000 Menti presentations with over 117,000 student voices heard by June 2022, with continuous growth! As part of being a campus-wide customer, they get a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) to make sure they use Menti in the best way possible to get value from all advanced features.
Their CSM, Ida Persson, acts as a strategic advisor, working closely with The University of York to ensure they achieve set goals and receive the proper training and relevant insights. One example is how Ida worked with them on a communications plan and rolled out licenses quickly to their staff. We are so happy about this partnership and see how they give every lecturer and student a voice, with over 440,000 votes collected since they initially started with Menti.
Rob Shaw, Educational Adviser, mentioned the initial rollout of Mentimeter Enterprise was a smooth process. Based on a survey, 97% of staff found it easy to get started with Menti as their central engagement and interaction platform when logging in with Single Sign-on (SSO). 85% agreed that activating their license with the campus-wide solution was straightforward. According to Rob, SSO makes it simple to manage institutional licenses and works well. SSO allows all lecturers and students to log in quickly with their university credentials for easy access and higher usage security. Because of that, lecturers can genuinely focus on the teaching experience and save time from administrative work.
The university staff has been proactive in sharing ideas and best practices with Menti. Dr. Gareth Evans, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biology, uses Menti often for workshop activities to support the flipped learning approach. Gareth uses a structure with self-assessments connected to online materials. Menti provides efficient ways for him to:
Bring forth student's questions with the Q&A feature
Support and encourage self-assessment and reflection
Check-in on student’s knowledge/understanding and provide further input
Share outcomes of student group work and give/receive feedback
Dr, Lilian Blot, Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, has found Menti invaluable for supporting extensive Q&A sessions within a specific introductory programming module. It helps him set expectations early on, assess knowledge and receive feedback on learning from videos. Lilian also uses Menti to ask questions from students anonymously to boost engagement from a wider group of students and check the temperature for ongoing teaching evaluation.
With Mentimeter, I can gain insights into my students' understanding and then adapt my teaching to that.
Dr. David O’Reilly, Lecturer in the Department of Education, enjoys using Menti to understand his student’s preferences/experience and confidence levels. He also uses Menti for long-term planning and gathering feedback.
Dr. Sally Quinn, Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, uses Menti mainly for Q&A sessions and cohort meetings to contextualize material and make it easier for her students to relate. She has seen positive effects of anonymous voting with Menti, which has increased student engagement. She also uses Menti to address misunderstandings. Here Sally is checking in with her class and receiving instant feedback from 125 students:
Dr. Gareth Evans collected positive feedback from his students in sessions using Mentimeter:
“Workshops were really enjoyable and made a positive impact on my learning this term. The opportunity to actively recall the content of the previous week and apply them to exam questions or questions from my peers was hugely beneficial.”
“Loved the workshops” The Menti quizzes combined with exam-style questions are so helpful.”
“I really enjoyed the workshop; the use of Mentimeter was fantastic. I would like to keep this format of workshop delivery.”
If you also feel inspired by the story of the lecturers and students at The University of York, read their full blog post on this topic: Active and inclusive learning and teaching post-pandemic: A key role for Mentimeter classroom polling. Read more here about Mentimeter for universities to set up your campus for success with the Enterprise campus-wide access for everyone. Providing meaningful engagement for all campus members with Mentimeter has made it possible for them to succeed in their focus on creating an active and inclusive learning environment.