So, welcome back to the Pogo Podcast. I'm your host, Wayne Pearson. With me today is Alex Grushaw. Hello, Alex. Hello, Wayne. What's on tap today? So, we're going to talk about technology today. This season in the Pogo Podcast, we're focusing on various aspects of facilitation and implementation of Pogo in various teaching settings.
We're going to be talking, as we have so far, with experienced Pogo users from around the country who utilize Pogo in their teaching settings and learn how they utilize Pogo in their classroom. In today's episode, we will be discussing the use of technology in the teaching environment and how it can be used to facilitate the use of Pogo. In this episode, I will be talking with practitioners from three very different institutions who use technology in different ways.
I'll have them describe their implementation and then we'll discuss ways that it can be used in a Pogo setting. So, with me today, moving from west to east, we have Tina Hansen from California State University in Chico. Hi. Hey, Tina. I have Ja Lo from Washington University in St. Louis. Hello, everyone. Hello. And Ruth Ann Paradise, who's at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Hello. Hey, good morning, Ruth Ann. So, having used a number of tech tools in my own teaching over the years, I want to point out to our listeners that technology is sometimes almost antithetical to the hands-on in-person methods that we try to employ in a traditional Pogo setting. But if the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we don't always get to choose the setting that we're teaching in. And that's part of the reason for today's discussion of technology.
So, I want to begin with each of you briefly describing the use of technology in your teaching. That is, what is that technology? How do you implement it in your teaching space? And how do the students interact with it? And what does it do for you, the instructor? So, Jia, can we start with you? You have classes that are about 200 students. What do you do there? Yeah. So, I teach introductory general chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. This class is about 200 students in my section.
We have two sections in total. In addition to lecture sections, we also have smaller recitation classes with each section is about 30 to 35 students. So, in recitation, they do problem solving. That's the content is based on the lecture. So, for my lecture, I use a poll everywhere as a way to engage students with the material during class. So, I present the question on the slide and then give students several minutes to think about it.
Before opening the poll, I also encourage them to work with each other while I work around the room to answer individual questions. And after that, I open the poll and let students vote. So, they can enter their answers either through the poll everywhere app or the poll everywhere website or via text messages. The app and the websites are free, but the text messages are not. Most students use the app, but either way would work.
After I close the poll, I often ask the students' volunteers to justify their answers and review the correct answer and the reasoning behind it. I try to do one poll question every lecture. Sometimes it's a quick recall. Sometimes it's a mid-lecture checking of a new concept or application. So, when I do it for a mid-lecture checking, it gives me the feedback about where students' understanding is, whether they are confused or not.
It also helps the lecture to become small fragments so that I can reset their attention span. And it also provides opportunities for students to work with each other during class. So, that's the technology I used for my lecture. Okay, great. But the idea here is, in a large classroom, engaging the students, getting some feedback from the students, and they all are accountable for this. Is that correct?
Yeah. So, this is really a way to engage students with the material, but also help them to work with each other because I promote teamwork in this class a lot. I really want them to work with each other rather than just individually solving the problem. Okay. Yeah. So, Tina, you also have large classes and a polling system. And so, you do some things similar, but there's also a little bit difference there. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah. So, instead of using Poll Everywhere, I use Pear Deck, like the fruit Pear Deck. It's also like a Google slide add-on that students can answer questions through logging onto a website. There's no app for this one or text messaging, but the website is friendly for smaller devices like tablets and cell phones.
I chose Pear Deck over Poll Everywhere because there's more question types, so I can have students draw out structures and other things on their slides instead of just multiple choice answers or short essay answers. But I use it because in my lecture, it's also a general chemistry course with 160 to 300 students. I do try to do some POGAL activities in the lecture course occasionally, and the group management is very difficult with large groups. So, for me, I use the polling software.
I use it throughout the lecture, but when we're doing POGAL activities, I use it to make sure each student is participating in the group because they all know they're responsible for individual questions that I ask about the POGAL activity afterward. So I found that it increases engagement instead of handing in a piece of paper or something where only one person was writing down.
But then we do have a POGAL-based lab manual as well, so the introduction sections of each lab are a POGAL activity, a published POGAL activity. And so in that section, I don't use Pear Deck because we're not already using a Google slide deck in the lab. We're just everything's pen and paper. So for those report outs, I use Jamboard, which is a Google add-on because we're a Google campus where each group can copy and paste their answer or type their answer or draw their answer onto.
It looks like a PowerPoint slide, except it's sticky notes that you can add in and you can draw instead and things like that. Okay, cool. And so I will also add that Jamboard is a very useful tool when you're doing things, not just with teams of students there in the laboratory, but as we'll talk a little bit later, it came to my rescue during the pandemic when you basically are dealing with people who are not all in the same room.
And we also use this a lot in workshops where there are people at large distances. So it's a very useful tool. We'll talk a little bit more about that. You talked a little bit about the laboratory there, Tina. Ruthanne, you also teach and coordinate labs as a large part of your work function. Can you describe how you use technology to facilitate work in your laboratory? I would be happy to do that. So at UMS, we are a Google campus and a Microsoft Teams campus.
So I could use either Google app applications or Teams. And so the courses that I teach highly require using a lot of data analysis. And I have found that the Microsoft environment plays a little bit nicer with the tools that I use. So what I do is I have in Microsoft Teams, I have some Excel sheets that the students can all access and edit. And so between my different lab sections, so I have a lab section on, say, Wednesday and a section on Thursday and a section on Friday.
And I'll have students add data on Wednesday. And my students on Thursday and Friday can then look back at the data from Wednesday, enabling them to asynchronously share data between groups. And this is important for my laboratory setting because I have a round robin setting where different groups are doing different experiments at different times. And so I can't have across the entire class sharing data that way. So they share data asynchronously across days using Microsoft Teams.
OK. And for people who are not necessarily familiar with Microsoft Teams, does it work similarly to, like, I mean, more people I think are familiar with Google Sheets and sharing stuff like that. Is this a similar type of technology or are there some features that, I mean, you said this seems to work better for you. What's the better aspect in this case?
So the reason that I have chosen Teams is they're fairly similar using Google Sheets versus Google Teams, sorry, Microsoft Teams, is that the level of analysis that I do with my students is a bit easier to do in Excel versus the Google Sheets. And that's why I've chosen it. If you're doing some really basic data sharing, Google Sheets is the way to go because it's actually a slightly more stable environment than the Microsoft Teams.
The Microsoft Teams freaks out when you get like 200 students trying to access the same Excel sheet, whereas Google Sheets would be, I think it would still be stable with 200 students trying to do something on it. Right. And so, I mean, I've found again in my work, which I'm teaching classes that are sort of similar to yours, Google Sheets works fine, but you can only go so far with your level of analysis.
And I find that my students end up porting it over to Excel on their computer and then moving that back up into Google Sheets. So, up to this point, we've been describing technology and different things that we're using, but not really talking about Poggle much.
So, as I mentioned at the top, many of these environments we're talking about today do not necessarily lend themselves to Poggle, but users certainly could adapt these technologies to improve the Poggle-like characteristics of a class using these technologies. And I think all three of you had sort of hinted at that, where you're trying to do things. So, actually, Tina, I'm going to start with you.
Can you sort of give us a little bit more Poggle flavor of how you're utilizing your technology to really implement either the process skills or the guided inquiry nature of your activities in class? Yeah, I'd be happy to. I actually remembered one more technology as well that I used.
So, during the pandemic, we switched to an online environment and put all of our groups into breakout rooms and switched our lab manual to an online format and found that it was really handy for the students to be able to screen share their lab manual while they were working on it. So, it really helped with some of those group work dynamics in the breakout rooms. And when we came back to in-person... Yeah, I was just going to ask, what was the technology used to share all that?
Yeah, so we just used Zoom when we were all online. Oh, okay. And you could see the recorder typing in the shared screen, right on the shared document. Oh, right. Okay. And we really enjoyed the fact that the other group members were a lot more involved in the decision-making process when they were watching the recorder filling out the sheet, where before we just had the recorder filling it out on paper and the other group members working on slightly different but similar things for the group.
But this really increased engagement in that group work dynamic when they were watching it. And so, when we came back to in-person, we realized we lost that and the students really wanted that back and really were like, oh, I wish I could just screen share this with you. Even though they're sitting in the same room, they were still on their laptops because we didn't want to share documents. So, we still kept the lab manual online for sanitary reasons.
And so, we used a Google Chrome add-on because again, we're a Google campus called Kami with K-A-M-I that allowed them to create basically a Google Doc out of their PDF lab manual and share it with each other so they were all working on the same PDF at the same time. And then they could also draw on it and other things that you could do more like in real life than you can online. So that really helped with a lot of those Poggle dynamics in the group.
But then the share out was tough because I would have had to log into each individual group's Kami document to see their lab manual or have students log into other groups' Kami document. It was just kind of a mess. So that was when we started- So the sharing only goes so far. Yeah, exactly. So that's when we started putting the Jamboard up on the big screen.
And so, everybody would just copy and paste their answers or replicate the drawing of their answer or whatnot right onto the Jamboard to share. Yeah, my experience with Jamboard was during the pandemic and the way that it worked for me was with my individual teams that I'd have on Zoom, they would each get a page as their quote, recorder sheet. And the recorder and actually anybody would sort of be seen there. And you could sort of see who was actually connected to each Jamboard.
But then what I would notice is students from team A would actually go over to Jamboard for team B and team C to see what they were doing. So it was sort of like looking over the shoulder of people who were in the classroom, even though they were all in different breakout rooms on Zoom. So the Jamboard could be used in that way to sort of share out recorder sheets.
And I tried to replicate that when we went back in person, but then that requires everybody to have their technology in front of them. And because I was having them do paper and pencil activities, it sort of took away from they would be looking at their activity book and then instead of writing stuff on a recorder sheet, they would then go to their laptop and do stuff. It didn't work as well in person, but I could see in a larger group that might be useful.
Jia, you want to chime in here a little bit and tell us a little bit more about how you use group dynamics? Sure. So like I said, that's for my class, there are two components. So one is the lecture section and the other is the recitation section. So the recitation section is for group work and we actually use the Pogo format there. So during pandemic, again, because of everything shifted to online, we also use the Zoom as a tour.
So we have all the students in those small rooms and I use the Google Sheets as a place for them to record their answer. I actually tried it both ways. So first I used the Google Slides with one slide for each group. And then I realized that when they enter their answer in, it could easily mess up the format of the slide. Sometimes they don't have enough space. So I have to select certain problems for them to record and other problems I just cannot ask them to record because of the format.
And then I also use the Google Sheets. So the Google Sheets, like Alex pointed out, I actually have just one sheet for all groups. It's just that I indicated the first column is for group one. And column is for group two so that they can see their peers answer. So the recorder from each group is responsible for recording the group answer. So from there, I can see their progress.
And if I noticed one group is much slower than the other groups, then I would pop into that breakout room and check on them. Or I noticed one group has a very different answer than the other group. That's also a hint. They probably did something wrong. So I want to check on them. But also it provides an opportunity for them to check on each other's answers. So they realized that my group answer is different from yours. So maybe we did something wrong. So they could go back to check on their own.
It also provides a central place for them to have all the answers. So they have access to the Google Sheets even after class. So if they wanted to revisit any of those questions, they can do that after class. So that's what I did for the pandemic. And I think after we switched back to in-person, we kind of just no longer use any technology in the classroom exactly for the same reason. That's the technology require everybody have laptop, have those smart devices.
Not everybody are having those handy. But talking about pull everywhere usage in the lecture setting, I think that could be an easy tour for those recitation class. So for example, we can choose certain problems and just ask students to enter their answers through the Pull Everywhere app. So that's still a way of having them report their answer. But it's not the ideal situation like reporting to every question because that's impossible. So still I think that's a possible way to use it.
Yeah. So I'm also wondering as we're talking here, one of the things that we still have Poggle practitioners who are not teaching their students aren't all in the same room. So there are people who do distance learning and things like that. And it's not necessarily asynchronous. I can't see where much of the polling type stuff can be. It's not going to work very well asynchronously.
But the Pull Anywhere and the technology, Tina, that you were talking about, those could actually be used for distance learning. If you were giving a lecture online over Zoom, you could actually pull your students even if they're not in the same room. Am I correct about that, Tina? You want to chime in there? Yeah. So that was one of the reasons I actually chose Pear Deck over Pull Everywhere is that you can log in from anywhere in the world during the live synchronous lecture.
But you can also make an asynchronous activity where the students can go through your slide deck and respond to each one individually. So you can do it either way, either synchronous or asynchronous with Pear Deck. Okay. Cool. Xia, you had something else to say on that? Yeah. So maybe I know this incorrectly, but I have the impression that Pull Everywhere would also allow students to participate asynchronously.
So once you activate the poll, unless you manually close the poll, it actually will remain open for probably several hours. So for students who are not physically in lecture, they can still participate and they can still participate even after class. So these are ways to, again, establish some level of engagement of students with material, even if it's not the ideal Poggle setting.
Ruthanne, do you have anything else you want to share about using these electronic technology pieces for Poggle use? Yes. The other, like Tina and Xia were talking about the group work and the reporting out. Because I'm using the Microsoft Teams, the students are keeping an electronic lab notebook. And so we're able to actually have different students record into the lab notebook and it's shared across the group that's working on the experiments together.
The other piece of technology that I've used is Gradescope, which is a grading tool. And in that, I've actually had students do self-reflection on their process skills and having them answer questions on how are you doing on your communication and your team management and that sort of thing.
And so that's another way that I have been able to get feedback from the students on their process skills as they're working on disparate experiments and they have different process skills that they're focusing on. So Gradescope is just online? Yeah. Gradescope is an online grading tool that initially was you just upload a document and you can do a lot of different things. And it has a rubric that's associated with it.
It now has some actually interactive assignments where you can have fill in this block or fill in this block. And the other aspect that I have enjoyed about it, which is totally not POGAL related, is that the rubric, if you decide that something was weighted wrong, you can change that weighting and it automatically adjusts all assignments. That's why I initially turned to it, but I found it useful for reflection for my students. Oh, cool. So that's a very important POGAL aspect.
And then that's something that they can also do sort of parallel to their lab work or whatever activity they're working on. And it doesn't necessarily interfere with the group dynamic that you're trying to get at in the classroom, but it gives the students some self-reflection time, as you pointed out. So another tool that I found useful is Catmai.
It allows the students to do peer evaluations and allows them to give either identified or anonymous feedback to their peers about how they're doing as a group. It allows me to get some insights as to how the teammates are getting along, if there's any clicks, if there's any issues going on as they're working together. Great. Well, I really want to thank you all for taking time to share your insights today. This has been really interesting. I've learned a few things.
Hopefully I don't have to implement them in pandemic mode again, but I hope that this is something that is useful to those of us POGAL practitioners who don't have the ideal POGAL classroom, but want to be able to use technology to get their students more engaged in their learning process. So for the POGAL podcast, this is Alex Grueschow, and I want to thank Ja, Ruthanne, and Tina for joining us today. Well, there you have it. Wow. What a lot of information in this one episode.
I'm sure there is something here for everybody who has struggled with reporting out in the POGAL classroom. And as always, we would love to hear from you. Again, if you go to hashtag the POGAL podcast on the Facebook page, the POGAL practitioners Facebook page, you will be able to let us know how you use technology in the classroom for reporting out or for whatever reason you might be using technology. So it's so long for now.
We are going to be back in the new year with more episodes of the POGAL podcast. Keep on listening. Bye bye.