Padlet is an online post it wall. It allows individuals (and large/ small groups) to post their comments,

questions, and resources in one place that is easily accessible to everyone.

How can Padlet be used for online teaching?

Gathering answers to questions during a lecture/ tutorial.

Padlet can be a good way of gathering students’ ideas during either a recorded lecture (when for

example you ask them to pause and think about something) or during a synchronous session when

one of the activities is asking students to post their answers/ opinions. If you have a small group you

can review responses as they are being posted and identify any that you might want to discuss. If

you have a bigger group you can identify couple to discuss during the session and afterwards go

through the rest, identifying common trends and post a response in the form of an overall comment

or video to the group.

Gathering feedback

Padlet can offer a quick anonymous way of collecting student feedback at crucial points in time.

Mentimeter can allow you to do the same thing, however, in Padlet the comments option can be

enabled and is a very useful addition that Mentimeter doesn’t have. The comments option allows

you to reply to certain comments and this reply will be visible to all users. This way you can

immediately demonstrate how you act on feedback and encourage more of a dialogue with your

students.

Checking students’ understanding - The muddiest point

There are a couple of ways in which you can track students’ progress and check their understanding

in an online setting. You can formatively assess with a short online quiz (either on Mentimeter or

Blackboard), you can embed short quizzes into your Panopto recordings or you can ask your

students what the muddiest point of the session was, i.e. what is the aspect of the material that they

still don’t fully understand or they struggle with. In this instance, Padlet could be a good way of

gathering student feedback as:

- it can be anonymous (usually only students who have Padlet accounts can be recognisable,

but you can turn on the option that will allow everyone to be anonymous). Anonymity will

encourage more students to come forward with what they still do not understand

- the comments sections allow students to help each other by posting their own explanations

– this removes the responsibility for you to provide all the answers and encourages students

to form more of a learning community where they can share knowledge and resources

(anonymously)

- the like buttons can allow students to vote on what the most common issues are. You can

use this either to provide supplementary resources, or you can ask students to vote what

they would want further explanation on that can be a starting point of the next session or

the topic of a short video recording

Collaborative work on producing a resource or researching a topic

You can use Padlet as a platform for showcasing group work. For example, if students’ task is to

research a topic, Padlet can be a good outlet for showcasing the main results of their research. It has

the potential to gather all of the relevant resources in one place that can be shared with the whole

class. A Padlet resource is also one that can be expanded upon by others and developed further.

Facilitating reflection

Reflection can be a difficult thing for students to understand. Reflection is often assessed through

reflective writing which can be even more difficult. Allowing students to create reflective Padlet

walls where a lot of sources can be incorporated – audio, video, image – has the potential to help

them be more reflective through other means than reflective writing.