Making Poo the prize with competitive polling

Pharmacology 1: Biochemical signalling (BPS2011) is a large unit with around 160 - 180 students each year. We have applied classes, which are attended by the whole cohort. I teach four weeks of the applied class so to make sure I engage all that students within that limited time, I created an activity that they could all participate in while also allowing them to apply what they've learned so far.

I used multiple polling activities using PollEverywhere, a fun Kahoot competition-style quiz at the start of the session and then a muddiest point poll run later on in the weeks of the topic.

Competition-style quizzes as the start of class

For me, the quiz to start off the session was really to just boost engagement and get students thinking on the spot and also highlight things that they might not know. They could then approach me with a question afterwards. I wanted it to become a competitive sort of fun activity, almost gamifying the environment that would really test their knowledge and get students warmed up at the start of the applied sessions.

Since it wasn't really anything contributing to their grades, I also created hand-made little keyrings as a reward for whoever got the top mark for the activity. I thought this would be a nice little reward that they could receive and to really get them engaged and participating in the activity.

I had four weeks with these students so each week I'd have one keyring to offer for that one hour class. Whoever won came up in front of the class and actually got awarded their little keyring.

I found that was a fun way to start off the class and get everyone actively engaged before we actually got into more in depth content.

Muddiest point exit poll

The muddiest point poll was typically done in my third week of teaching to cover anything that was done in the previous weeks. I used an anonymous poll to check what the clearest and muddiest points were. Then I could take what they found as the muddiest point or the most difficult concept to grasp and then I would implement more information or more activities that could enhance learning for those muddiest points in the next week.

Student feedback following the unit was that they really enjoyed the engagement of interactive activities, especially when it was low stakes. They could practice that knowledge but not have it affect their grades.

They enjoyed the fun rewards, since it was connected to the content, given that the keyring is a silly poo emoji and we were talking and learning about the gastrointestinal tract and how faeces are compacted.

I think they also found it as a way to connect with me more because they could see that this was something I put effort into preparing for them and actually made myself.

The students also appreciated the Muddiest/clearest point polls because I found it was a way for students to feel confident and comfortable to answer the questions because it was anonymous.

I think using polling within the context of a different unit really depends on what is most important to grasp for students. I think that the competition quizzes at the start of class could be really applied to any setting.

For the muddiest point polls, it just really depends how much time you have with the students and how practical or possible it is for you to be able to implement changes once you do get those muddiest points coming through.

I think with using PollEv, there can always be technical issues that come up on the day. So practising setting up quizzes, and creating those low effort sort of activities first, for example, doing a word cloud first and seeing if that works in your live classroom, would be the best way to tackle any hurdles.

That would probably be the biggest challenge I had— just making sure it worked properly in class— as I think implementing these sorts of activities is quite straightforward!

While I used Kahoot for the competition-style quiz at the start of the session, it’s not a university supported tool so payment is required to use it. While Poll Everywhere is free to use at Monash, so it is more accessible.