...

- all of the students have to register with the help of a smartphone or laptop (in emergency cases, though, everything can also be done with paper&pencil) and take part in a pre-prepared survey after which the results are immediately shown and discussed  

- for the entire survey apprpoxapprox. 10 minutes are needed

• Discussion of individual questions and answers, however, could take up more time 

...

• instead of discussing the text in groups in order to then discuss the questions together in the group, all in all 5 single choice questions were prepared in ARSnova.click
• studnets students were able to join the survey by registering ión in ARSnova.click with a PIN
• alternative voting apps such as kahoot were rejected at the very start as they were not suitabe suitable for an academic context 
  
  • in the 7th week ARSnova.click was given up on and kahoot was now the preferred tool; ARSnova had tecnical technical problems on more than one occasion
    • that ARSnova is not the ideal tool was also pointed out by the students in the evaluation; the alternative that was implemented was either pingo or kahoot
    • the creation of survey is not as comfortable in ARSnova as it is in kahoot (when using Mozilla Firefox), e.g. when pressing the backspace key the function 'step back' was sometimes triggered sometimes
    • the students had problems again and again when it came to registering, sometimes the survey was started without any intervention by the lecturer
    • what was also found to be unpractical was that the answer time was counted together with the time allotted for reading the questions; in kahoot the countdown only starts when all have read the questions
    • in contrast to ARSnova, the students knew kahoot and in some cases they had already usd used it themselves; this was another reason for its usage

- before every relevant seminar session a set of five questions (only in the fnal final session was a longer survey undertaken; see example 3 in section 3) was created that could be accessed via a PIN 

...

• smartphone, laptop or a similar device with internet connection
• in case / (n emergency cases, though, everything can also be done with paper&pencil in an analog setting if someone accidentally dosndoesn't have a smartphone or a laptop with them 
  
  • this option was sometimes applied if some of the students came late
  • no account is necessary in order to participate

...

• on 16 May a text was uploaded to Blackboard that was supposed to be read by the next session (23 May)
• four acompanying accompanying questions were asked to the text that were supposed to capture the students attention and make them focus
• the ARSnova survey is based on exactly these four questions; an extra question was added; three questions were single choice questions (that means with only one correct answer available); two were short answer questions (that means the students had to supplement a certain word or a certain phrase)   
• an example of a question from the survey (D is correct):
  
  • What were the major sources of Old English loan words?
  • A  Old High German, Italian 
  • B  Celtic, French
  • C  Latin, French 
  • D  Latin, Old Norse 

...

• as preparation for the session on 9 May, an assignment was given one week earlier (2 May) to read a text on the socio-cultural situation in England's early middle ages
• what was different from the first example was that there were no accompanying questions to the text
• most of the questions of this survey were single choice ones, one question was a short answer 
  
  • with a short anser answer question the participants have to type in the answer; this answer is automatically compared by ARSnova with a sample answer that was saved beforehand
• example of a question from the survey:
  
  • When did the Normans invade England?
  • Answer: 1066 

...

• the above described technical difficulties at the start when implementing ARSnova did not, however, deliver the desired results
• the generally positive view on this e-teaching method at the start was later on replaced by a negative view regarding the app resp. the entire method
• thoss those that mentioned the usage of a voting app for revising the contents in the evaluation there was only one positive assessment; all of the others criticized this e-teaching method  
• the following points can be underlined:
  • independent of the actual app being used, some students find the implementation of voting apps as being too school-like and not fitting to an academic context (see the feedback at the end of this section)
  • if in the face of the first point of the method - that it was already being confronted with skepticism early on - it is important that the app works reliably; technical problems have a negative effect on the acceptance of the method (see the feedback at the end of this section)   

...

• altogether five ARSnova or kahoot surveys were undertaken
• a further argument against the more frequent use of ARSnova.click or kahoot is the fact that the creation of the surveys is coupled with time expenditure that is missing in offline consultations on the topics 

- the question a sto as to the balance between innovative and monotonous methods is, in any case, definitely a complicated matter that does not have a general solution available

...

• with both the same result can be achieved; however, the registration process (both for lecturers as well as students) is much simpler in ARSnova.click 
• ARSnova.voting requires several clicks and a longer PIN; in return, the educator has his/her own profile on ARSnova.voting in which all of the surveys are saved 
• so here we have confirmation that the e-teaching tools need to be tested first before they can actually be applied sensibly for teaching purposes – best would be to use a test audience (one person is more than enough for this)

- ARSnova gives studnets students the possibility of also registering with the aid of a QR code; even though I integrated the QR code in my ppt presentations on a regular bsisbasis, this possibility wasn't used 

...

• the original plan envisaged realizing the online surveys at the start of every session; I refrained from doing this due to the above mentioned reasons, especially so that the sessions would not become too monotonous 
• in addition to this, the original plan was to use kahoot instead of ARSnova
  
  • ARSnova was taken as it is an open source platform and as it seems more suitable for the academic setting of the wurde genommen, weil es sich um eine open source-Plattform handelt & weil sie dem akademischen Kontext der Lehrveranstaltung angemessener erscheint & nicht so kindisch-verspielte Oberfläche hat
  • aus den obengenannten Gründen wurde letztendlich doch kahoot genommen, obwohl es sich hier um keine open source-Plattform handelt
    • in diesem Fall musste leider die open source-Komponente dem reibungslosen Verlauf des Unterrichts weichen

- als positive bewerte ich, dass durch die Integration der Umfragen alle Studierenden gezwungen wurden mitzumachen

• dies kann nicht gewährleistet werden, wenn Fragen in einer (Gruppen)Diskussion besprochen werden würden, da sich meistens immer wieder eine Minderheit der aktiveren Studierenden zu Wort meldet

- die Möglichkeit, anonymes Feedback in einem Blackboard-Forum zu schreiben, wurde letztendlich nicht wahrgenommen, trotz wiederholter Hinweise auf diese Möglichkeit

• es lag allerdings nicht daran, dass es keine Wünsche, Kritik & Lob gegeben hätten, denn in der Evaluation wurde Feedback gegeben

- die Einsetzung der Voting-App im Unterricht wurde auch in der offiziellen Evaluation mehrmals erwähnt:

• • course; it does not have such a child-like, gamified user interface
  • due to the above mentioned reasons, though, kahoot was implemented in the end even if we are not dealing with an open source platform
    
    • in this case the open source component lost out against the smooth running of the teaching process

- as positive I would evaluate that through the integration of the surveys all of the students were actually forced to participate  

• this cannot be ensured if questions are discussed during a (group) discussion as usually it is only a minority of the students that put up their hands and actively participate 

- the possibility of writing anonymous feedback in a Blackboard forum was, in the end, not taken up even though I mentioned the possibility of doing this several times

• it was not, however, due to the fact that there were no wishes, criticism or praise as feedback was given in the evaluation 

- the usage of the voting app for teaching purposes was also mentioned several times in the official evaluation:  

• positive aspects of the course: arsnova.click testing (person positive Aspekte des Kurses: arsnova.click testing (Person 1), the materials used are very helpful, as well as the quiz (Person person 2)
• negative Aspekte des Kurses: quizzes aspects of the course: quizzes via smartphone (Person person 3),the online quiz (Person person 4), whilst the quizzes via smartphone are a great idea, one should maybe check beforehand whether they will work (Person person 5)
• allgemeine Vorschläge zur Verbesserung des Kursesgeneral suggestions for improving the course: use of a different arsnova ARSnova, for example pingo Pingo (Person person 6)

6. Self-assessment of the course

- die Vorbereitung der ARSnova-Umfragen kostet mehr Zeit, als man vielleicht erwartet, ich habe am Anfang ungefähr eine halbe Stunde für eine Umfrage gebraucht

- Studierende brauchen auch oft mehr Zeit für die Anmeldung in die Umfrage & es kommen immer wieder unerwartete technische Schwierigkeiten vor

• Vor dem Hintergrund der beiden Punkte sollte man überlegen, ob sich dieser Mehraufwand lohnt & ob die Studierenden in der Tat von der Verwendung einer Voting-App profitieren

- manchmal stellt sich die Frage, wie Trotz alledem finde ich, die Ergänzung einer vorwiegend offline Lehrveranstaltung mit ein wenig online Elementen sinnvoll ist

• Meines Erachtens ist es auch realistischer, die Smartphones & Laptops der Studierenden in den Unterricht einzubinden, als sie verbieten zu wollen

- ärgerlich war, wie oben bereits an mehreren Stellen angesprochen, dass ich mitten im Semester ARSnova gegen kahoot wechseln musste

• Kahoot ist einfach viel bequemer & intuitiver

the preparation of the ARSnova surveys costs more time than one would expect; at the start I needed about half an hour for one survey

- the students very often also needed more time to register for the survey and there were technical difficulties time again and again

• against the backdrop of these two points, one should consider if the extra effort is worth it and if the students really do profit from the use of a voting app

- sometimes the question crops up how, even with all that, a supplementation of a mainly offline course with a few online elements is a sensible thing to do 

• in my view it is more realistic when one integrates the smartphones and laptops of the students into the teaching environment instead of wanting to ban them

- what was annoying was, as already mentioned above, that I had to replace ARSnova with kahoot in the middle of the semester

• kahoot is simply a lot easier to use and more intuitive

- one thing that one should take note of is the influence of the sun - my seminar took place in the summer semester and the rays of the sun sometimes adversely affected the projection on the screen- eine Sache, die man beachten muss, ist der Einfluss der Sonne. Mein Seminar fand im Sommersemester statt & die Sonnenstrahlen haben manchmal die Projektion an die Leinwand beeinträchtigt

Merken