In today’s educational landscape, technology plays a pivotal role in transforming higher education classrooms. Instructional technology enhances student engagement and fosters collaboration for improved learning experiences. This article presents available tools for incorporating backchannels, whiteboards, audience response polling, visual boards, and quizzing during synchronous classroom sessions.
Canvas Chat
MS Whiteboard
Poll Everywhere
Padlet
MS Forms
Student Experience
Ask questions or share thoughts freely during a presentation.
Access to your whiteboard creations, collaboratively markup visual content, or create video demonstrations.
Individually demonstrate understanding, compete, or record a grade.
Report out from smaller groups for instructor to share with the entire room.
Individual and team assessments with ability to keep trying until they get the correct answer.
Learning Benefits
Backchannel behaviors already exist, live chat connects this behavior into the front channel of your session.
Increases communication, decreases perceived risk of interruption.
Active learning and engagement can improve attendance.
Allows students to visually indicate areas they have questions about.
Creates an artifact to study after class.
Prepares students for assessments with hot spot questions.
Use to confirm understanding before moving on to new topics.
Requires individual attention, informs instructor of participation.
Demonstrates audience misconceptions.
Motivates students to participate during discussion time.
Targets the "share" part of think-pair-share type activities.
Facilitates the instructor in bringing group ideas back to the whole class.
Creates an artifact to provide feedback.
Facilitates group assessment for team-based learning.
Instant analytics to indicate if the class needs additional instruction.
Access
Enrollment in a Canvas course.
Instructor must enable on course menu for students to use.
Cardinal Apps access.
Available to instructors and students.
Instructor must request a Poll Everywhere presenter account.
Anyone can participate in responding.
PowerPoint requires installation:
Install for Windows
Install for macOS
Cardinal Apps access.
Available to instructors and students.
Create a UIW Padlet account for unlimited boards and full features.
Instructors can make a board a Canvas Assignment.
Cardinal Apps access.
Available to instructors and students.
Can be shared to allow anyone to respond or require UIW sign in.
Considerations
Give guidelines, such as comments must be session topic focused and academic in nature.
Have a co-instructor or student moderate the backchannel to bring questions to the presenter's attention.
Pause to check-in and address questions or comments.
Encourage sharing of resources.
Practice helps develop drawing skills for smooth delivery of content.
Ask the class to refrain from marking up images until prompted.
Insert all images to be used for a unit of study.
Use with MS Stream screen recorder for up to 15-min videos.
OneDrive is integrated within Canvas for instructors and students to easily share or submit creations in Assignments.
Use Folders to stay organized by topic and can be converted into a quiz.
Word Cloud for single keyword consensus.
Ranking questions for differential diagnosis or skills steps.
Q&A to collect class ideas for upvoting.
Competitions to allocate points for correct answers, optional timer, and leaderboard display.
Explore the templates to ensure your layout aligns with your intentions.
Breakout Groups template works well for discussions.
Create complex questions and use branching to simulate clinical decision making.
Have all students take the quiz individually as a pre-test.
Set the quiz to practice mode for group work.
Review with the entire class to address misconceptions.
Can convert a Word document into a quiz.
Get Started
Live Chat Overview
Microsoft Whiteboard Overview
Poll Everywhere Overview
Padlet Overview
Microsoft Forms Overview
Instruction Guides
What is Canvas Chat?
How do I use Chat as an instructor?
How do I use Chat as a student?
Whiteboard Help & Learning
Microsoft Whiteboard Blog
Poll Everywhere UIW Articles
Activity types – Poll Everywhere
Create a Padlet Assignment in Canvas
Padlet Knowledge Base & Support
Microsoft Forms Help & Learning
Microsoft Forms Blog
Use branching logic in Microsoft Forms
Alternative Products
Canvas Discussions
SOM DO Program: Elentra Discussions or Learning Event Pages - Discussions & Comments
Padlet
Lucid (Whiteboard) in Canvas courses
MS Forms
Polls App in MS Teams Chat
MS Loop - have each group create their own subpage
SOM DO Program: Elentra Polls
Poll Everywhere
Polls App in MS Teams Chat
References
Make Lectures Interactive with Slack Backchannels - MIT Sloan Teaching & Learning Technologies
Study of Live Lecture Attendance, Student Perceptions and Expectations - PMC (nih.gov)
A whiteboard for health literacy – the story of Dr. David Grew | Explain Everything
Poll Everywhere to Encourage Learner Satisfaction and Participation in Internal Medicine Fellowship Didactics - PMC (nih.gov)
Polling in medical training mimics real-life outcomes | Poll Everywhere
Using 'Padlet' (or other electronic bulletin boards) ... | MedEdPublish
Online collaborative Padlet-mediated learning in health management studies - PMC (nih.gov)
The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies | Cult of Pedagogy
Microsoft Forms Tips for Education - Microsoft Community Hub
Development and Implementation of a Synchronous Online TBL Using Microsoft Forms - PMC (nih.gov)
Real-time decision-making in chronic illness branching simulation - PMC (nih.gov)