Collaborative learning in face-to-face, online, hybrid, or blended classrooms can take several forms and shapes, such as discussions, sharing ideas, Q&A sessions, peer-to-peer learning, project productions, and other interactive tasks in pairs, groups, or whole classes where you can actively engage your students. This can lead to higher student performance as a positive correlation between collaboration and learning outcomes can be seen evidenced in research, such as Collaborative Learning Techniques<\/a> where Barkley, Major, and Cross (2014) <\/p>\n\n\n\n “identified some of the benefits of collaborative learning, which include increased student engagement, persistence, and personal development, as well as improved achievement across a wide range of students (p. 23-7).”<\/p>Columbia (CTL): Center for Teaching and Learning<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Collaboration can also help with building communities, preventing your students from feeling isolated or disconnected, and would also provide the opportunity to share ownership and responsibility. Creating a collaborative learning space allows students to get a wider understanding of a topic from various aspects, whilst working together as a team. This can also help your students with their future journey in terms of employability and other social situations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So what would be the best tool to use for collaborative learning?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As there is a wide range of tools that can be used for this purpose, we would recommend choosing the one that would be the closest to your preferences and expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of these technologies, we would like to highlight Mentimeter as it is supported by the University of Plymouth and it is a commonly used tool amongst educators due to its ease of use and speed of rich, engaging, and accessible content creation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It is also a mobile-friendly tool, therefore, students can use different devices to view the content and complete the tasks you have created for them. This is also an essential condition of online learning as one of its key objectives is to be able to \u2018learn anytime and anywhere\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mentimeter is a cloud-based polling tool to interact with students through presentations in real-time using a mobile phone or other device connected to the internet. Mentimeter visualises the response data from participants which can be displayed live but it can also be hidden until all students have submitted a response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For more information about the tool, please visit their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mentimeter has many great benefits, such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can find a lot of useful reviews about Mentimeter, where people, including academics, share their opinion about the usage and their experience of the tool. For example, on a company’s website called Software Advice<\/a>, you can find reviews from various aspects from people all around the world, working in different industries, including Education Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An anonymised user stated:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I really enjoy utilizing the integration of real-time polls and feedback mid-presentation. We have used Mentimeter, primarily making use of the poll feature, to gauge both student and advisor feedback and understanding. We have been able to pull the reports the gather additional data to share with our team. Whether for students or for staff, Mentimeter has been incredibly useful and allows anonymization of data, allowing us to see where things are succeeding and perhaps where things can be given a bit more clarity.”<\/p>Anonymised user (Industry: Higher Education, Company size: 10,000+ Employees)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Another one said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Being able to interact with viewers instantly makes this software more eye-catching than competitors such as Microsoft, simply because of this innovation has allowed Mentimeter to be a clear choice when someone wants to measure how attentive their audience is and make the viewer feel that they are being heard.”<\/p>Christopher (Industry: Education Management, Company size: 10,000+ Employees)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n An academic, Martha Martinez has also shared her opinion related to the tool as she used it for her class AEP800.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is Mentimeter?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Benefits<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
What do people think about Mentimeter?<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n