Utilizing QOMOs in the Online Classroom

Recently BVU has started utilizing QOMOs to enhance instruction and student/teacher interaction.  We want all of our students to be able to “watch” their professors work through the material they are presenting. The QOMO QIT30 is the perfect way for our online professors to capture their work and post it online.

One of our early adopters is Professor of Accounting and Management, Courtney Berg. She states, “I really like the screen capture capabilities that it offers.” This is the beauty of the QOMO. We can capture still pictures and video to upload into the courses that we offer. Courtney continues, “I plan on using QOMO in the class to record other videos on common mistakes made on the homework during the week and other videos on how to complete the practice activities.”

Courtney Berg has also been utilizing the QOMO for clarifying directions that have been troublesome in the past. “I have currently created a tutorial video on how to install a PDF printer in the software that comes with the text in my class. Student are required to turn in their assignments as a PDF and struggle every term with installing the PDF printer,” Berg states.

To learn more about the QOMO visit, http://www.qomo.com/Product.aspx?ProductID=10.

Add Polling to Have Interactive Presentations

If you’re looking for a way to spice up your presentations or lectures and get your audience more involved, try adding polling questions! Some suggestions:

• Gauge understanding during a lecture = It’s great way to see if the topic at hand needs to be covered further or if the audience is comfortable enough for you to move on to a different topic.
• A “choose your own adventure” = See which topics your audience would like to cover. For example, there are five different topics I want to cover in class for the week, but the order in which we cover them is irrelevant. So why not let my students decide? They feel more involved in their learning process, and I have an order to follow — it’s a win-win situation.
• Quizzing = Put your quiz questions into the PowerPoint presentation and go through them one by one. The students can see how they compare to their classmates. You have the opportunity to explain why each answer is correct/incorrect, which means immediate feedback for students. My students reported learning more from these quizzes and having less test anxiety.

TurningPoint Product Plug

We’ve been licensing TurningPoint (http://www.turningtechnologies.com) for several years. The benefits:

• integrates directly with PowerPoint = you only have to make minor adjustments to your existing PowerPoint presentations (i.e., not starting from scratch).
• works with physical clickers, a ResponseWare app for iPad/iPod Touch/iPhone, and a website (http://www.rwpoll.com) = great variety
  • the physical clickers (ResponseCards) cost around $25 each
  • the ResponseWare app and website are free to use (which is why I encourage people to go that route instead of asking students to buy their own clickers)
  • with the clickers you’re limited to the multiple-choice/true-false types of questions
  • you can add open-ended questions with ResponseWare and the website
• polling can be anonymous
• or it can capture the name of the responder (this makes quizzing possible)
• a variety of reports can be generated afterwards, and the session data can be saved for further reports
• we’ve had 100% connectivity with the app and website

If you’re interested in trying it, check out our short help guides: TurningPoint Presenter guide, TurningPoint participant guide

Free Options

1. http://www.polleverywhere.com is a decent, free alternative with a variety of ways to interact (phone, twitter, browser). The results can be published in your PowerPoint presentation.
2. http://www.polldaddy.com also looks promising and allows a variety of ways to interact (email, iPad, social media). They have decent free features and a pricing plan for more features.

Happy polling!