Abstract:
Engaging students with module content is often a difficult task for any academic. When students are not receiving feedback about their participation efforts in lectures and seminars, this can lead to increased disengagement. Polling software, such as Vevox, can be used to resolve this issue and increase engagement with the use of formative feedback. Vevox is an interactive polling tool that can be embedded in PowerPoints presented during lectures, or used without a PowerPoint, to provide students with the opportunity to respond to multiple choice questions; develop word clouds to disseminate ideas; and to receive real time formative feedback. This presentation will describe a case study of how Vevox activities were implemented within a Foundations module (Introduction to Psychology) at Loughborough University. The aim of using Vevox was to engage students with the module content while providing polling activities that allowed instant formative feedback opportunities during teaching hours. Overall feedback about the use of Vevox within the module was very positive, including comments within the Staff Student Liaison Committee. Students appreciated the opportunity to receive feedback to monitor their own understanding of content and more activities were requested. The case study provides evidence of the successful use of Vevox with a module where students undertake lectures and seminar classes and where a lack of engagement had been highlighted. Future work will consider the appropriate opportunities to implement different types of software (H5P, Socrative) and these opportunities will be discussed.
About the speaker:
Dr Laura Jenkins is a University Teacher in Psychology within the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University. Her teaching is focussed around several areas of psychology at both undergraduate and foundation level. Laura is a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and has nearly 10 years of teaching experience.
After completing her PhD in Psychology (working memory), Laura held academic teaching positions at Northumbria University, Oxford Brookes University and the University of Strathclyde before moving to Loughborough University in 2018. Throughout her teaching career, Laura has taught on numerous psychology modules including cognition, statistics, personality and individual differences, biological psychology, questionnaire design, qualitative methods, development and social psychology. At present, Laura is the module leader for a 2nd year Applied Cognitive Research module, a Foundations Introduction to Psychology module and she is also the module co-lead for the final year projects module within Psychology (alongside supervising her own undergraduate project students). Leading and teaching on a variety of modules has provided Laura with experience of implementing different pedagogical methods over her career, adapting these methods to suit the needs of each cohort.
Alongside her role at Loughborough University, Laura writes regular blog posts and articles for Psychreg and actively contributes to supporting the activities organised by the Psychreg team.
