Multichoice: Online voting app for engaged teaching

Abstract

There are a variety of methods to engage students in lectures and tutorials utilising technology. This presentation shows the work we have been doing to generate our own system which like all systems, has its pros and cons. This presentation describes the process we have gone to through to develop a system that can either be used in conjunction with existing ppt slides or self-contained questions. Multichoice has the ability to utilise all mobile devices with all operating systems and is based on the UNITY environment. It features the real time polling of students in a very fast and easy platform, and gives a second chance option to utilised peer instruction within classes. It also has the facility for students to ask questions to the lecturer in real time for large lectures where first year students are often hesitant to draw attention to themselves. The system tracks the students through their student numbers so that lecturers can identify struggling students early on. Statistics from the questions are stored for later analysis. In first year physics classes we use multichoice in lectures with approximately 60-70% of attending students using it. In light of this, we have developed the attitude that students should work together with someone who is logged in and discuss the problems as a group. This has increased peer instruction considerably in our first year classes. Multichoice will be available for any learning institution to use.