classroom

Need Some Spice in Your Classroom? Try Kahoot!

For nursing educators who like their students awake and engaged in class, the challenge of finding activities that are both relevant and exhilarating remains a tough nut to crack.  Some teachers in the College of Nursing and elsewhere have incorporated games into their classrooms to add competition, motivate students to stay engaged with material, and help students remember a lesson long after it ends.  Enter Kahoot!, an online interactive quiz platform that allows the classroom to turn its energy toward the age-old goal of winning a game.

Gamification has gained popularity in recent years as a tool for engaging people in tasks that might otherwise be un-stimulating to the point of boredom (think exercise apps, shoppers rewards programs, and even investing apps that create a prize system to keep users interested.) Several examples of gamification in the nursing education world already exist, such as this study which used Kahoot! to help drive pharmacology lessons home for nursing students.

Kahoot! allows instructors to ask questions with a countdown timer and lets students play against each other, alone or in teams.  You can add a song or video clip to questions as well.  Learn more about Kahoot! on their website, and watch videos that highlight the capabilities of this platform.

Wondering where you can get started using Kahoot! in your classroom? Check out this blog post on using Kahoot! in the college setting.  Next, watch this video on how to get started.  Have you used Kahoot! in your nursing classroom or in other professional development? Please comment below with your experiences!

Addendum (by Joni Tornwall)

Since this article was posted, some frequently asked questions from faculty have come to light:

How do I sign up for a Kahoot account?

The College of Nursing does not currently have a paid account with Kahoot.  Sign up for a free account at kahoot.com.

How do I use Kahoot?

The video Lara references above (1:35) is a good visual demonstration that will help you get started in Kahoot.

How do I launch my first Kahoot quiz in my classroom?

Ask your students to open a browser and go to kahoot.it on their laptop, tablet, or phone. Then, ask them to enter the Game PIN, which you will see on your Kahoot interface after you launch your game at kahoot.com.

Can I use Kahoot to take attendance?

You can see how many students have joined your game, but they may enter a name that is not their own.  If you need to know specifically who is attending your class on any given day, contact the CON IT department to learn about other applications that can easily do this electronically for you, like Top Hat.

References:

Taking Notes in Nearpod

Nearpod is a interactive classroom presentation tool that can help students become more engaged in the classroom. Not only is this tool great for professors who want their students to experience more active learning through presentations containing polls and quizzes, but it also contains features to make the classroom setting less stressful for students.

One of these features is the note-taking component. With this component, students will be able to save all of the slides in a lecture, along with extra notes they can add to each slide, to either their email or Google Docs. This will enable students to pay more attention to what their professor is saying in lecture instead of scrambling to re-type each slide in their notes. This way, the student will have all the necessary information from the lecture slides, and have the time to type out extra notes that the professor may express verbally.

How to Capture Your Notes in Nearpod

When in a Nearpod presentation, click the arrow in the upper right hand corner.

 

Click the option that says “Notes.”

 

You will now be able to type extra notes in the grayed-out bar at the bottom of the screen.

This is an example of notes being typed out under the slide.

 

When the lecture is over, make sure to click the “Share” tab in the lower right hand corner in order to save your notes.

Now, you can either send the notes to your email or to your Google Drive.

 

If you send the notes to your email, it will download as a Word document. This is how your saved notes will look. They will contain all the slides, and any additional notes you added to a slide will appear under the slide.

Do you have questions about how to take notes in Nearpod? Email CON-S-help@osu.edu.

Top Hat: Encourage Attendance and Participation in your Classroom

If you are unfamiliar with Top Hat, read on to learn how incorporating this software in your classroom may help you to increase participation, save time, and better prepare your students for tests.

tophat

Top Hat is a software program that can be accessed on a computer or a mobile device.  Teachers can create extensions of their classroom on this online platform that students can sign into and interact with in multiple ways. The simplest function of Top Hat is attendance-taking.  See the ODEE instructions on taking attendance with Top Hat.  With Top Hat, students will log into your class and a simple button allows you to take a snapshot of who is in attendance. This feature allows instructors to save attendance records for all students over the course of the semester.  These attendance records can also be exported from Top Hat to Canvas for grading purposes.

In addition to attendance, Top Hat allows you to survey or quiz your classroom.  Students who are logged in will see questions that you post, and can enter their own answer. Once results are in, Top Hat will show a graph of the student responses, thus allowing teachers to make course corrections immediately and to gauge student comprehension during lectures.  Unlike old clicker systems, Top Hat only requires a laptop or mobile device and Wifi connection.  Later, students can log in to their own Top Hat account to see the questions that were asked in class and review their own answers.

Top Hat at OSU can be found at go.osu.edu/tophat. If you would like help getting started in Top Hat, contact the CON IT department at CON-InformationTechnology@osu.edu and we will happily help you out!

 

Some further resources and information can be found below: