Learning Instantly With Instant Results

Imagine this: You walk into the classroom filled with high spirit and enthusiasm, eager to begin your lecture. As always, you have prepared ahead of time and know how you’ll deliver your lecture. Ten to fifteen minutes in, you pause and ask if anybody has any questions. As usual, nobody raises a hand, but you want to make sure. “You guys sure everything’s clear?” Heads nod. If you ask a specific question, it’s often the same one or two students who voluntarily respond.

This scenario is rather common in most traditional “passive” classrooms, and it can be very discouraging even for the keenest teachers. Obviously, just asking questions and pausing for students to think is inadequate. It neither engages the students nor makes them an active participant in the learning process. It’s likely that you end up answering your own questions!

Research has shown that two of the primary challenges in teaching are (1) how to engage students in the classroom and (2) how to find out if they’re learning what you’re teaching. Even entertaining and well-crafted lectures are not the most effective way to promote conceptual understanding and deep learning, but they’re still the main method of instruction. Complementing or replacing lectures with more active approaches can appear daunting, but several alternative methods involving group interactions and inquiry-based learning have been carried out successfully.

Online polls, which can be created for free on BooRoo.com, can help engage students in the classroom. The teacher asks multiple choice questions and students select their answers. BooRoo automatically tallies the answers and the results may be projected for the class to see. Based on the overall response, the teacher can then decide whether to proceed or to spend more time on a certain topic.

While multiple choice questions may seem limiting, they actually promote student engagement and guide student thinking. They work particularly well if the possible answers represent common uncertainties or difficult ideas.

When properly designed and implemented, a polling system provides an easy way for a teacher to conduct continuous evaluation and assess the conceptual understanding of the students. In addition, the students realize whether they understand the lesson without waiting for a test. If used correctly, online polls can have a profound impact on the learning experience.

A web-based polling system doesn’t require any special hardware or software. As long as the classroom has an Internet connection, it’s practically all set.

Using online polls in the classroom provides a host of advantages, including:
• Measure student attitudes
• Increase students’ learning retention
• Measure students’ prior knowledge
• Determine if students have done their assigned reading
• Test student understanding
• Get students to tackle common misconceptions
• Assist testing of conceptual understanding
• Increase class attendance
• Facilitate peer instruction and discussion

By: David Meagor

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