Case study: Using Mentimeter for engagement and interest in large two-hour lectures

Department of Language and Linguistic Science
George Bailey

George Bailey describes how he uses Mentimeter to support engagement in large lectures on a first year linguistics module with around 120 students. He uses the competitive quiz question type (with leaderboards and small prizes) to engage students and gather their intuitions and reflections about language. This helps maintain interest and provides a fun way to introduce or review complex concepts. He also uses word cloud and multiple-choice questions to gather student experiences and perceptions about elements of phonetics before comparing the responses to published research. He feels that this provides students with a change of pace which is helpful for long lectures, and that it also helps students to understand linguistic features and concepts. He also points out that showing collated responses on screen adds interest and focus, and is also beneficial for students catching up via lecture capture.

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Using Mentimeter for engagement and interest in large two-hour lectures (Panopto viewer) (5 mins 47 secs, UoY log-in required)

Transcript

First year phonetics and phonology. So it's one that all our students, well, 90% of the students in our department do. So it's quite a big module. I mean, it's like 120 students or so usually most years. And I use it for that reason because, you know, it's just it's such a big module, it's hard to kind of, um, gauge opinions and things. And, you know, it's just an easy way of getting them to interact.

So this one yesterday was, um. It was a kind of quiz where - so how I used to teach this lecture was I would just kind of basically tell the students all these facts. So it's kind of a section of the lecture where it gives them an idea of the kind of diversity of, of languages across the world. And I used to deliver it in a way where I would just kind of tell them, you know, the stats like, um, you know, 90% of languages have this particular sound or whatever.

And in the end, I decided to do it in a kind of quiz where, you know, I kind of told them that I don't expect to know the answer to these things. I'm just interested to see what you kind of intuitions are. Um, and we do it in like, a leaderboard way. And yeah, I mean, it worked really well. So like I say, I did this yesterday and, um, they were just they got very giddy and excited by it. I think they like the kind of competition aspect. It also helps that I brought some chocolate prizes along for the winner, which I think always helps, you know, motivation.

So yeah, just questions like these. Um, and then, yeah, obviously the, the leaderboard comes up and um, that one took about ten minutes or so, but it's just a nice way of getting them to kind of interact with it. And um, I mean, some of these questions are things which I don't really expect them to know. It's just like I say, I want to know what their intuitions are. Um, because it's like ok a lot of questions were, yeah, it's like compared to the average, like how many, you know, fricatives, a particular type of sound used in language. Um, they will obviously know, the English system, but I don't expect them to know kind of other languages necessarily.

So it's kind of just tapping into the, their kind of gut instinct for a lot of the questions - other ones are kind of based on things that we kind of touched upon in the module. Um, like the, the this final question is something which, um. They kind of know. I've kind of alluded to the fact there's this relationship. But, you know, I guess a lot of them didn't realise how strong it was because only eight of them got the question right.

Um, but yeah, a lot of time when I use it, it is more for kind of fun things. You know, it's a bit of like an extra activity. I guess. There's another one. Um, kind of a week is. Oh, it's this one it's week 5 - Where we talk about basically how there's no kind of inherent link between sound and meaning it's all kind of conventionalised and it, you know? Um, but there's an exception to that. And that's - I tell them about this chromatesthesia phenomenon, where people kind of associate a particular colour with certain vowel sounds, and it's something that some people have and other people just don't. So this, again, is a nice way of kind of just tapping into that.

So, I kind of just ask them, you know, what is the colour to them of the e vowel? And then I just get them to, yeah, all of them just type in the colours. And then it's quite interesting because I can then compare the results with, you know, what we expect from kind of published research. Um, and yeah, they all kind of correspond to what we expected, which was quite nice. So it's typically things like that, you know, it's a bit of, you know, it's relevant to the topic, but it's a bit of kind of fun, um, way of just getting them to engage because these are two hour lectures as well. Um, which, you know, I've been there from the student side and they, they can drag sometimes. So it's like a nice little break. I try and kind of put them in the middle of the lecture where possible because I always have like a five minute break anyway in the middle of the two hour lectures.

Um, but, but yeah, it's mainly just as and when like it's relevant basically. This one, for example, is not something that we'll ever like test them on. It's more just like a kind of cool example of like I like to call it like linguistics in the wild, you know, because it's something which everyone can relate to because, you know, it's just asking about their intuitions, you know, everyone can reflect on their own language use and their own kind of expectations. So it's not always stuff where it's like kind of core module material that they need to learn or revise. It's just, um. Yeah. Just getting them to kind of think about things. It's typically things like that.

So. Oh, yeah. This is the, um, the very simple one. The famous Laurel or Yanny thing. Because again, it's just very relevant to what we're talking about in - the first lecture is all about an introduction to phonetics and sounds. Um, so, yeah, that's just a nice one where, I mean, you know, it's a very simple thing where I could just do a, uh, put your hands up kind of question, but I just like this because I think they get more excited when they see it come up on the screen and things, which is quite nice. And it's also good because, for people are catching up on lecture capture, they obviously can't see when people are putting their hands up. But at least this is something that's recorded on the screen.

Whenever there's opportunity, whenever I kind of present something the first question I was asking myself is, you know, can this be something which I kind of turn into a question rather than just me telling them? Um, and like I say, I think with a lot of the content in this kind of module, it's something which people can reflect on because it's about language, which, you know, we all speak it so we all have our own kind of intuitions. So I think it just works well for things like that.