Time to vote - now we have Mentimeter!

Published 17 August 2020

Do your students (and yourself) think that your lecture is too long and tedious in the online classroom? Don´t worry - you can now easily add interactivity through the voting/poll tool Mentimeter. The long wait is over and now employees and students can log in to Mentimeter with their LU credentials.

With Mentimeter you can add a layer of interactivity in your lecture, both in the classroom as well as in Zoom or Teams. As a teacher you can provide questions based on the content in your lecture. In the classroom you can pause your presentation and show the questions - in Zoom you can easily share the questions on your screen.

The students can vote for different alternatives, with their mobile or their computer, completely anonymous. You can show the voting results in real time, or wait until everyone is ready. The correct answer may be shown directly or you can wait and let your students discuss the result with a peer in the classroom/in an breakout session. Let them vote again, perhaps the voting has changed as a result of the discussion?

There are so many ways to use Mentimeter. You can create open questions without a correct answer. The students could be divided into groups and write short answers/posts - almost as on a pinboard, anonymous as well. You can thereafter use the posts as a base for follow-up discussions. Another useful way of using Mentimeter is to let your students ask anonymous questions, before or during your lecture.

Do you want to deepen your knowledge? Reading the article No Longer a Silent Partner: How Mentimeter Can Enhance Teaching and Learning Within Political Science (2019) could be a way. Emma Mayhew writes about the importance of activating students and using the tools in the digital environment in a pedagogically founded way. In order to make it a meaningful learning activity, a pedagogical motive is necessary. According to Mayhew it is also useful to explain why you are using a specific teaching strategy, and what the benefit is for the students. Other considerations could be how you phrase your questions, how ideas and concepts are interrelated, and how you mix questions on newly introduced facts with questions aimed for rehearsal. The article also has many links to other useful articles and can be used as a starting point for how to activate your students.

Good Luck!

Create your account by logging in with your LU -credentials here: www.mentimeter.com/join/lunduniversity

Reference:

Mayhew, E. (2019). No Longer a Silent Partner: How Mentimeter Can Enhance Teaching and Learning within Political Science. Journal of Political Science Education, 15(4), 546–551. Link to full text here