5 Tips for Great Student Engagement !
Classroom response systems are designed to make teaching and learning more interactive and engaging, especially in classroom settings. This kind of tool is very effective when used correctly.
- Leave a few minutes (2-3) for everyone to be connected
Some current learning tools are very quick and easy to use. However, speakers often do not leave enough time for the audience to log in.
It is essential to spend 2–3 minutes at the beginning of a session to explain how to participate to your audience. This will ensure a high level of engagement.
2. Leave enough thinking time
Voting devices are very useful when they are used correctly. Don’t forget that your audience members have to read and understand the question before they can answer it. Too often, the time given for these steps is too short. This can cause frustrations, and the learners’ understanding of the topic will suffer from it.
3. Give the correct answer and an explanation
One of the big advantages of interactive solutions such as Wooclap is that they allow participants to be aware that they have made a mistake, and that they have to pay attention to understand why they have made it.
It is essential to take advantage of that moment to give an explanation. This will increase the participants’ understanding as well as preventing the same mistakes from being made again.
Again, this step is often forgotten which causes the interactive solution to lose its efficiency.
4. Avoid a never-ending series of questions
Making the audience participate allows you to capture their attention. However, you must not overdo it. In fact, a question marathon could have a counterproductive effect. Don’t hesitate to take pauses every so often to be able to get the highest attention span from your students.
5. Clearly communicate to your audience how you are going to proceed
It can happen that a lecturer will give students the possibility of asking questions via the messages wall. This is a very interesting and useful feature if the messages are sorted at some point. If you want to answer the questions at the end of the session rather than during your presentation, inform your audience of this beforehand. It will avoid them thinking that you do not care about their messages
A different learning tool to engage students
Wooclap is a software that allows students to use their mobile phones and laptops, instead of a physical clicker, to answer multiple choice questions and participate electronically in class discussions.
☞ Sebastien Lebbe is CEO & co-founder of Wooclap, a collaborative tech solution for conference and training sessions. You can follow Wooclap on Twitter, Linked in, Facebook and Medium.
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