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Choose a technology tool that is designed to support active learning. Research and prepare a brief written or video reflection on the tool and its uses. Consider the following when preparing your reflection:

1. Description of the Tool:

1. What is the tool and what are its main features?

2. How does it function within an educational setting?

2. Advantages for Large Classes:

1. How can this tool help manage the unique challenges of large classes?

2. In what ways does it foster engagement and participation among a large number of students?

3. Practical Application:

1. Provide specific examples of how this tool could be used during lectures, seminars, or other educational activities.

2. Discuss any necessary preparations or considerations educators need to keep in mind when implementing this tool.

4. Potential Challenges:

1. Identify potential challenges or limitations in using this tool in large classes.

2. Suggest possible solutions or workarounds for these challenges.

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I chose Poll Everywhere. I have not used it myself but loved to try it.

1) It is a polling software that allows you to create word clouds, simple MC questions, or opened-ended questions as well as simple polls as in a majority vote. It is used across a variety of university and can be integrated into PowerPoint, Google Slides, Zoom and Teams.

It works in an educational setting as the instructor can poll the class very easily, in a similar to way to clickers. What I think is a really cool tool is the world cloud features (which works in real-time). A instructor could, for example, start the class w/ a word cloud just asking how are you feeling today.

2) It can help in a large class because students can easily pose questions so that 1) no one is left out but also 2) anonymously as it may be frightening for a person in a large class to openly ask a question. It can also create engagement as the instructor can pose MC questions or even open response questions for a quick check in to see if people have understood the material, to make people think and actively engage with the material and even talk to the people around them to solve the question.

3) In terms of preparation, one must check w/ their university of they have a license as UofA does not and it's free for only 25 respondents, which won't work in a large class but there are different pricing options available. Preparation must also include to allow for questions to be asked at the right point in time, i.e., knowing when to ask them and have Poll Everywhere ready and included in the lecture slides or already open for a smooth transition. The same goes for understanding questions or open-end questions. They must be included before the class to have a well-running class.

An instructor could start the class with 1-3 MC questions to recap the content from the previous lecture and build a connection to the coming one. It can also allow the instructor to just check in if there are any questions from the previous class or anything else that they should know. During class, an instructor can use questions to check for students understanding which can allow for great discussions if not everything was clear. Students can see the overall results from the MC questions so that they can engage in a discussion with the people around them to figure out the solution to the problem; the same goes for open-response questions.

4) Challenge or limitations comes from a university that may not have a license buy maybe a cheap option is available for the instructor to purchase. Another challenge is that someone must be very well prepared and have thought about the class before to make sure that Poll Everywhere (and all the possible questions and engagements) are already integrated in the lectures slides, or, as least they must know when to use Poll Everywhere for what.

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Integrating Technology into large classes

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Integrating Technology into large classes

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I think integrating technology is definitely a powerful tool to improve engagement. I have used platform in the past (Mentimeter, for example) with good results. It does require some initial time to adapt class content for these tools.

(https://www.mentimeter.com/)

As for the tools I plan to implement in my class next term, definitely Padlet. Padlet is a platform that allows you to summarize and comment using different content, such as text, images, video, etc. It also allows interacting with posts created by other people. I was using Google slides and then have students share them, but Padlet makes simultaneous visualization better.

I like that you can use different content as I think this may be appealing for different learning styles.  I do a lot of participation activities where I ask students to summarize most important concepts, or explain with an example which will make a good fit for this tool.  I think that can be easily extended to complement some of the active learning techniques presented in this session, such as the debate, think-pair-share, 1-min reflections, etc.

On that note, explain with an example is one of my favorite exam questions; I think it helps students relate content with their previous knowledge/experiences and things they care about.

I think some challenges with using this tool may be related to students not being necessarily familiar with it, or may prefer to communicate in one specific type of content. I think this can be approached by providing a lot of examples, as well as seeing their peers work.

Tophat also seems interesting, but I’m not too familiar with it, so I will do a bit more research on it!

(N. Risso)

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I am a big fan of the use of technology tools in my classes. For a given course I teach, I typically use a polling program (most recently, Top Hat) to engage students in class; an anonymous survey tool such as Google surveys, for periodic feedback on the course; and Gradescope for grading. When teaching online, I also add Google Drive for collaborative activities. I have been a big Jamboard user and I'm rather heartbroken that it is going away.

1. Gradescope is a grading software that can be used to grade homework, exams, etc. It allows members of the instructional team to create and modify rubrics during grading--the best feature from my point of view. There are also AI tools that allow the grader to group similar answers, although I have not used these tools. It also keeps a library of comments so you can simply grab a comment to address common patterns of reasoning without retyping it.

2. Instructors or students can upload assignments. I have used this capability so that student groups can upload one assignment when they have completed an in-class activity. I don't know that it fosters engagement and participation per se, but it makes my life SO much better that I give better feedback.

3. I frequently use this tool to collect and grade group assignments--one student uploads and selects the other students in the group. I also use it for grading exams. The tool is integrated into D2L so once the Gradescope activity is created in D2L, scores can easily be transferred.

4. Challenges with this tool--for me--included properly setting up the assignment in D2L so scores could transfer. I also ran into challenges when a student sent me a late assignment and I wanted to import into Gradescope, but I had it set for students to upload. It's do-able but required consultation with one of the helpful folks on the Instructional Technology team at UCATT.

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Description

This tool can be used with PowerPoint to gather responses from students in the form of polls, word clouds, and questions from learners.

Advantages

Allows every learner to be engaged. Removes the fear of embarrassment responses are anonymous.

Practical application

Solicit prior knowledge on a topic.

Instructor needs to design meaningful questions.

Challenges

Learners need a smart phone or laptop to respond.

Responses are anonymous so the instructor doesn't know who is on target and who is off target.

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Out of the various interactive tools, I found TopHat was something I really wanted in class and didn't have it in its complete form. Previously I used Zoom's quiz and polling feature. The nice thing is TopHat gives a lot more option, let's you add multimedia with a question and that can make big difference.

1)The tool could be very good at gaining a pulse or reviewing material during class and getting a barometer.

2)Advantage for Large Class: It can enable wide engagement because it's so accessible. Further it will let wide participation as a result. In large class, may have the rare situation of facing software issues alone or leaving students by.

3)Practically the tool can be used to cut deep and ask critical questions right in the middle of class. It will definitely be a great polling/student barometer.

4) Adoption by students, need for significant prep work. Constant monitoring.

Jekan

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My interest was peaked by the Feedback Fruits technology, especially related to getting students to interact with each other.

This tool can be used within the learning management system, and can be used for the purposes of

1. Peer Feedback

2. Discussion

3. Activating Study Materials

4. Interactive classroom

I feel I am still not exactly sure how it looks as it integrates with the learning management system, however, I was intrigued by the templates that you can use to get started. I specifically looked at the self-introduction and discussion activity. I liked that it was a template that I could easily pull and use for our class. I also liked that it walks students through the necessary steps in a clear way.

It is hard to tell, but it also looks like the system will automatically match students with at least 2 peers for the discussion.

This activity seems like it will foster community and sense of belonging in an online course, which I also like. I think I would be able to use this to get students started with engaging with each other. This might give them more confidence then engaging with group work activity later in the course.

The challenge, at least that I see, is that I am not sure how easy it is to integrate this into D2L. The learning curve to get started with this might be large. However, UCATT is always an excellent resource, so I might try asking them for help with implementation.

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I have not used this yet but plan to use it. I have been experimenting with helping student sequence activities in my course in the way that works best for them. But we have not had a good learning management tool for this. Feedback Fruits offers three different things I am interested in trying.

1. Peer reviews using an intuitive rubric system.

2. Structured self-assessments.

3. Integration throughout a student's full learning journey with asynchronous and synchronous activities.

The main advantage of this tool is that it allow me to offer personalization at scale but provides a safety net for students and reduces the amount of planning work they need to do.

The biggest challenge is my own learning curve. But I think I can learn this new tool pretty quickly.

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Kahoot is one of the learning tools that I have enjoyed exploring and feel could be effectively utilized to encourage engagement for active learning in the classroom and online.

What is Kahoot and what are its main features?

In its simplest terms, Kahoot! is a tool that uses game-based learning to enhance educational experiences through quiz creation, live games, and integration with other EdTech tools. For example, you can integrate Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams into Kahoot!. In addition, Kahoot enables you to build up a library pool of questions that you can easily customize or use in the creation of quizzes or exams. It can also be used to create practice exams and quizzes.

Advantages for Large Classes:

Kahoot! has the advantage of being a flexible tool and can be used on basically any type of device, from smartphones to tablets, laptops, etc. Given the widespread availability of devices, I have never experienced issues with ensuring it is accessible to students and have even incorporated team modes for ease of access if I do not want to require all students to pull out an individual device.

Kahoot! is a tool that is particularly useful for getting students to engage in course content because it gamifies learning. Students really seem to enjoy the friendly competition with each other if I set up a Kahoot! quiz where students are placed into teams that compete for the top three scores. Scores are also based on speed and accuracy, which I find students enjoy trying to be the fastest group to put in their answers. You can also mix it up and have all students work together to try to top their best scores if you prefer fostering more collaboration without as much competition. This might sound silly, but students also seem to respond well to the ability to dress up their “avatars” because Kahoot! allows you to dress your avatar in silly hats, glasses, and things like that. Finally, it allows me to emphasize to students what concepts are the most important and what key themes I want them to take away from the course.

Practical Applications:

Kahoot! works very well as a tool to provide summary reviews of important concepts, or as practice quizzes and exams for students to review important material. With that said, there are some practical considerations to take into account. For example, the website is not as user-friendly as I have seen with other tools. Kahoot! frequently tries to re-route you to their paid version so I find I need to take some time to make sure everything is set up beforehand. Your quizzes can also be set to private or public mode and that changes which settings are available when you launch a quiz for the class so this should be considered ahead of time as well.

Potential Challenges:

Sometimes, you can lose your internet connection and lose your score progress on the Kahoot! quizzes so it helps to have some backups or to record scores between rounds. If the class is really large, you will not be able to play certain modes in the free version and may be limited to team mode. Even in team mode, you are capped at 10 teams in the free version, so you want to be sure you are breaking up groups in to even numbers taking class size into account. You could always pay for the subscription service to work around these, but this is not always budget friendly.

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I learned a little more about Kahoot for this activity and will share some info about it here.

1. Kahoot! is a game-based learning tool that provides instructors and students ways to create quizzes and play games live or asynchronously. It can be used during class, and can integrate with other learning technology/software.

2. For large classes, this could be a good way to engage students as each student is playing/answering questions, whether individually or as part of a group. Kahoot! is useful in that it can be used on an assortment of devices including laptops/tablets/phones, so students do not need to have any special equipment other than what most will already have on hand to access it. Because of the gamification aspect of Kahoot!, it is intended to be engaging and offers a variety of ways that games can be monitored/tracked for fun.

3. Practically, Kahoot! would work well for review sessions, in-class practice quizzes, recall activities, and for learning assistants to use in review sessions.

4. Challenges include potential technology issues as may arise with any technology (user error, glitches, etc.). Also, Kahoot! has paid and free options, with some of the more advanced features only available at the paid tier, which can be a barrier for instructors as it would likely mean to pay out of pocket.

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I will consider using TopHat because of its various features, including polls, discussions, student progress boards, and LMS integration. All the features help get quick student feedback regarding the course materials so that issues are addressed promptly. The student progress boards will allow me to identify struggling students and offer specific help. It is also great that the discussion feature allows the inclusion of other learning materials, such as videos and links. Sometimes, it helps to use the anonymous feature so that students can provide feedback. A challenge with using TopHat could be that students and I may need time to get familiar with the platform and its several features. This could lead to students getting frustrated with the learning platform in addition to the new course materials. Gradually introducing the platform features in the class activities will make a smoother learning experience.