Case study: Using Mentimeter in History Lectures

Department of History
Henrice Altink

Henrice Altink describes how she uses Mentimeter within one-hour History lectures. She typically uses word clouds or open responses to gauge students’ existing knowledge at the start of lectures. She feels that referring back to responses as the lecture content is introduced helps her to tailor contents to the group, and also develops a sense of student ownership. She also describes how she makes use of it for a change of pace during lectures and also at the end to elicit key take-home messages, promoting more active engagement and helping students to develop skills in notemaking and summarising complex information.

Watch their presentation:

Using Mentimeter in History Lectures (Panopto viewer) (3 mins 12 secs, UoY log-in required)

Transcript

As we moved into, um, semesterisation. Now, um, nearly all courses have lectures. So a course that I used to teach just as a two hour seminar now also has a lecture. And what I was really aware of is that, you know, 40, 50 minutes of talking can just be really, really hard to follow. So that's when - when I use Mentimeter, it's largely, often at the beginning to get like a sense of what is the level of knowledge already. So, you know, few weeks ago, for instance, there was a lecture on the 1930s. It's about a black radical organisations. But I just started off by saying, what do you know about the 1930s? So just do a word cloud. And then it helps me a bit to see what they already know. But also, as I then go into the lecture, I can refer back and say, well, as some of you mentioned... So it gives a bit of ownership for them as well. So most of what I do tends to be these kind of word clouds in lectures. It's very quick. It doesn't take up much time in your, in your lecture. It gets them going. Sometimes, you know, some students are late, they can still pop in, but it doesn't take up that much space if you do a word cloud like that. Or for example, I teach a course, it's around race. And so the very first session is the difficulty about what is race, what's ethnicity. So I simply put up what do you associate with race - quick. Then another slight what do you associate with ethnicity. You know um, but yeah, today it's the open ended longer - the longer form one. And especially, you know, if you want to just get the lay of the land, what do they know? Also interesting for them to, you know, to dig in and see that they have some background knowledge without, you know, without having done any of the reading or whatever, and that helps as well, just to, in a way, to just not launch straight in. I mean, quite often, we have probably in the Arts and Humanities a particular idea of... we've got so much stuff to convey, and we only have like essentially 15 minutes getting students in and getting them out that we don't want to take up time and we just need to get down and get everything in there. Um, but, you know, sometimes when you look at the students, you know, you see, after a while they can't take it in anymore, you know, so, so doing something at the beginning or middle in the middle. And I've also done it at the end sometimes, you know, what do you - what is the takeaway point from all from this lecture. You know, rather than me summing up what I think was the most important thing, let's just - for them to do it as well. When they've put a, you know, a few points on there, then I will run through some of it and then highlight what I think are the most important ones. Bring those out. But, you know, it's - it's another thing for them to, you know, like lectures are quite hard. I mean, personally I'm not a fan of them. I have to do them. If it was up to me, I would not do them. Um, but you know, they take notes etc., but, you know, it's also a learning skill then, what is the main points. What do you take away having listened to me for like 40, 50, 55 minutes? What is the main takeaway point?