Ideas to help you start on the right note Not a fan of cold starts? You’re not alone. It’s not always easy to get college students to engage, especially when they might be rejoining on-campus classes after a long time of being at home, behind their computer screens. Class discussions often tend to be dominated by a few extroverted students or those who have been attending in-person. As a result, some students feel a bit left out, and it can be difficult to get them to open up. Enter icebreakers. They can make introductions much more fun than just simply doing a roll call. They m ..read more

This alternative has been making waves for its revolutionary philosophy. How does it really work? In 2016, Linda B. Nilson wrote about a grading method named Specifications Grading that she had used in her own courses. She argued that it increased student motivation, improved their performance, reduced cheating, and didn’t really take too much extra time and effort on her part. It seemed too good to be true but several instructors have written about their experiences with the method in the last few years, and first-hand reviews of its benefits continue to pile up. This blog post sum ..read more

For some time now, we’ve wanted to discuss a topic that impacts our nations, our communities, our families, us, and indeed, our classrooms — the idea of equity. To get a holistic perspective and learn more about the pedagogical concepts that originate from the idea, we referred to MIT’s course Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices, which articulates the ideas better than we ever could. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we thought we’d summarize what we learned from the course in this infographic. Hope you enjoy reading it! ? Based on the course “Becoming a ..read more

Get the most out of students during discussions Making class discussions tick is among the most crucial aspects of an instructor’s role in the classroom. No matter the discipline or subject, setting aside time for discussions can help students become more than rote learners seeking to simply absorb information. In this week’s infographic, we’re taking a look at questions that instructors can ask students to drive discussions in he right direction. 70 questions to drive class discussionsAbout Acadly Acadly helps instructors engage students and automate time consuming classroom chores like atte ..read more

Feeling invisible can help students feel seen. Learn how to use anonymous polls to invite honest feedback in your class. Nine-tenths of education is encouragement. – Anatole France It is no secret that not all students are equally comfortable speaking up in class. Several barriers that inhibit communication can be addressed with simple in-class polls, but even polls have limitations. It can be difficult to get honest feedback when students feel there may be a risk of being monitored or “found out”. That’s where anonymous polls are really useful! Here are 10 reasons to use them in&nb ..read more

In-class student engagement technology is evolving rapidly. Should you consider making a switch? The rise of Student Response Systems (also called Audience Response Systems or Classroom Response Systems) in higher-ed seems like an inevitability now, but that wasn’t always the case. The adoption of any groundbreaking edtech innovation requires thousands of educators to try these products, use them regularly, evangelise their use among their colleagues, and to weather the bumps on the road. Clickers were the pioneers in this domain. Clicker devices look and work like TV remotes — inst ..read more

Learn how to create the quizzes that engross and challenge your students Creating quizzes is a skill that takes time and experience to perfect. It is famously easy to create questions that test lower-order thinking — think facts and figures. While such questions are not useless by any means, it is important to incorporate questions that test higher order thinking as well. A common misconception is that multiple choice questions (MCQs) aren’t a good way to test higher-order thinking. A probable reason for this is that the top of the Bloom’s Taxonomy is occupied by a form of learning ..read more

The “trick” to take your questions from your Powerpoint slides to Acadly in a minute What are clickers and why are they fast becoming obsolete Clickers were the primary way to poll students in the classroom for years before software alternatives like Acadly started replacing them. The way to use clickers is to put multiple-choice questions up on the screen for the students to see, who can select an option by ‘clicking’ the corresponding button on their clicker device (which look and work like TV remotes). Instructors can view the overall poll results and the option(s) selected by eve ..read more

Recording attendance in face-to-face classes or meetings is an overhead that can cost a group hundreds of productive person-hours over a period of time. However, automating attendance has traditionally not been straightforward or affordable. Consequently, roll calls are still the go-to method for capturing attendance in classrooms and meetings around the world. Here, we’re comparing some of the popular apps for automating attendance along several parameters of importance for teachers, presenters, and institutions. But before we get down to the specifics, how does attendance automation wo ..read more

Attendance in Hybrid Classes — Zoom Integration | Acadly Learn how to record attendance in hybrid classes using Acadly with Zoom integration There are many kinds of “hybrid” classes, but let’s say the setup is that you have a few students attending your lecture in-person and others attending remotely. How do you automate attendance in such a class? What’s being “present” in an online class? Is counting hours the right metric? What about in-person classes? How can physical attendance be automated? Can a single tool take care of both kinds of attendance. Most importantly, is there a f ..read more