Turning classrooms into conversations: How the University of Sydney boosts student engagement
When it comes to engaging students, especially in large classes, teachers often face challenges. At the University of Sydney, educators are tackling this head-on with the help of Mentimeter. Now available to all staff under a campus subscription, Mentimeter helps bring interaction, reflection, and a sense of connection into every learning moment.
This article's intention is to share a case study of how Mentimeter is used in real-life practice and is not an official University of Sydney endorsement.
Easy to use, flexible to adapt
Mentimeter supports University of Sydney in building interactive presentations by combining quizzes, polls, word clouds, Q&As, and more. Staff can choose to use Mentimeter alongside PowerPoint or create their entire presentation directly in the tool.
This flexibility extends into the classroom. Michiel Bliemer from the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies uses Mentimote on his phone. This feature allows him to control slides, see presenter notes, and see incoming questions while walking around the classroom and staying connected with his students.
Creating space for connection and belonging
Mentimeter gives students a way to participate without pressure, and helps educators create classrooms where everyone feels safe to contribute.
Camilla Whittington from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences uses it to create a safe space for topics that might be controversial, polling students before and after discussion to track shifts in opinion. Her colleague Emily Remnant lets students co-create next lecture’s content by voting on their favourite eukaryote species, and then using the most popular organism as an example in the following lecture about chromosomes and karyotypes.
Andy Smidt from the Sydney School of Health Sciences uses Mentimeter to help students build evaluative judgement by walking them through an exemplar assignment and asking them to apply a grading rubric, step by step. He also embeds videos into his presentations, inviting students to react using emojis like the heart symbol. “It helps them focus, I think, and they feel connected to each other,” he says.
It helps them focus and they feel connected to each other.
In the School of Psychology, Carolyn MacCann uses separate Mentimeter polls to show the distribution of responses from two groups of students who identified as being an “introvert” or an “extrovert”. The two distribution diagrams showed that extroverts and introverts saw the same situation very differently, bringing the theory to life through practical classroom application.
Supporting focus and interaction during class
Educators use Mentimeter in synchronous teaching to support attention, clarity, and understanding.
Emily Remnant uses it to identify learning gaps: “When a few students select an incorrect answer in Mentimeter, I know where I need to clarify. It creates a terrific teaching opportunity.”
Mentimeter is also effective in hybrid settings, allowing both in-person and remote students to participate equally in one shared space.
For end-of-class feedback, anonymous polling helps. Anastasia Globa from the Sydney School of Architecture and Planning asks students simple check-in questions, like whether they’ve started their assigned course.
What the university appreciates the most is that Mentimeter gives their students time to think and contribute without pressure, increasing diversity in responses and avoiding the awkward silence after a verbal prompt. Whether asking why they study genetics or how they’re feeling about starting university, educators across all different faculties use it to spark honest reflection and conversation.
Bringing engagement into asynchronous learning
And even when students watch recordings or do pre-class work, Mentimeter keeps the interaction alive.
Teachers can embed poll questions into recordings, allowing students to pause, respond, and reflect before continuing. They can also assign quizzes or open-ended questions as pre-work using links or QR codes shared via Canvas or email.
Set to Survey mode, Mentimeter allows students to move through questions in their own time, making asynchronous learning just as interactive.