Jess – My F2 teaching project

Posted on March 5, 2021March 5, 2021 by WBYHT

Jess

Foundation doctor teacher

As a keen teacher and someone who wants medical education to form a major part of my future career, I have lots of experience in taking part in other people’s teaching programmes but not necessarily the experience in the organisation of teaching. This year I decided to challenge myself and organised and took part in the delivery of my own teaching programme.

Hints and tips from an online peer teaching project

Here are some useful hints and tips I picked up along the way!

Preparation

recruit in advance! Ensure times and dates of sessions are clear from the beginning and send regular reminders (2 weeks and then 1 week in advance!) to prevent any last minute “drop outs”. Make it clear what is expected of the facilitators and any resources that may need to be created to support the teaching – I found it useful to send them my own example to work from.

Choose your platform wisely

as much of our teaching remains online for the time being, make sure to choose an online platform that you are comfortable and competent in using. As a complete technophobe, I had a practice run prior to delivering the first session to avoid any unnecessary mishaps during the live session.

Advertise to your learners

reaching your target audience is important in making sure you get the numbers at the teaching sessions. As my teaching programme was a surgical case based discussion series, I approached the surgical society associated with a local University so that I could use their social media platforms as a means to advertise sessions and reach my target audience. This also meant that the responsibility was shared between me and their committee as it is in their interest for the programme to be a success also!

Effective teaching practice

Addressing mutual expectations between yourself and your learners can be especially tricky during online teaching. Outlining the structure of the session is useful in informing the learners of what they can expect eg quizzes/breakout rooms etc. Setting out “house-keeping” at the beginning eg cameras on if possible, microphones off if not talking and revisiting this throughout the session if required can be helpful too. Ultimately, we are teaching adult learners and it is up to them to engage however we can provide regular encouragement to try and create a friendly learning environment.

PiPs 4.0- planning and evaluation

Posted on January 22, 2021March 19, 2021 by WBYHT

PiPs 4.0 “Medagogy” 18.12.20

A PiPs report on the plannning and evaluation of PiPs 4.0- our one day training and community event for early career educators in the North West

Mim

trainer

ST3 peadiatrician- Wigan

Umair

Lead / Head gardener

GPST2 – Oldham

Nate

Trainer

ST6 Anaesthetics – Salford

Mishal

LEad / head gardener

CTF – MRI

Hakim

Lead / head gardener

CF – Oldham

Bethan

facilitator

F2 – Bolton

Brian

Facilitator

CF – MRI

PiPs

Designer

Background

PiPs activities started out as a one-off conference held in September of 2017. At our inaugural event, Foundation doctors who were leading or participating in peer teaching in the North West of England were invited to attend a day of teacher training. This free day of training was set up and run voluntarily by foundation doctors and funded by Health Education England.

Workshops in 2017 were delivered by senior educators on topics such as; presentation skills, cognitive load theory, project longevity, feedback and simulation.

The “new starter” or “inspiration” day has now run for four consecutive years. The aims and objectives for the conference have grown over this time as the team have evolved their own understanding of their pedagogical (or medagogical) values.

The joy of the day has always been in the buzz created by foundation doctors excited about education. An attendee told us in 2019 at our last face to face event- “really friendly and positive atmosphere. Re-enthused my motivation to work on my teaching project and generally teaching on the wards” (attendee, September PiPs 2019)

In 2020, in the context of the pandemic, necessity drove the inspiration day online. Below is a summary of what we did and learnt.

PiPs values

Planning PiPs 4.0

2020 was the first year that we planned to deliver most of the content ourselves. Previously, only one or two sessions per day have been lead by the PiPs team.

We met several times to discuss our vision, objectives and plan for the day. Miro, an online team planning resource, was used to map out the day (see below).

Click to enlarge image

We started off by brainstorming sessions based on past successes; what we thought we would want the cohort to learn and what had been asked for in previous sessions

Initial ideas for sessions

Click to enlarge image

This was the first year we planned to run more than two sessions at once. We felt this might be a bit of a gamble (due to the technology) but we hoped it would give more opportunity to support attendees to make and seek their own learning objectives.

The final plan for the day…

Click to enlarge the image

This was the first time the team had used the programme Hop in. We chose it over other platforms as it enabled us to have participants actively involved throughout the day in various parallel breakout rooms. The team had experienced issues using other platforms in the past including zoom and another webinar software called webinarjam and we were keen to try something different.

Hop in to PiPs…

Curriculum

PiPs aims to cover aspects of teaching theory, practical methodology as well as project planning for peer teaching and evaluation.

We acknowledge that our learners come with a unique experience of education and because of this we encourage them to identify their own learning objectives.

This year was the first year we offered a choice of parallel sessions.

An active medagogy

There continues to be a wide spectrum of approaches to medical education practices from those rooted in cognitivism all the way to those that acknowledge the complex social structures we operate in.

At PiPs we endeavour to role model practices based in best evidence as well as explore the frontiers of education from health care and beyond. We endeavor to be learner-centered advocating active learning at all opportunities.

Technology

Despite the pandemic forcing our hand to technology to deliver PiPs, this necessity has brought many opportunities.

We have explored several platforms and are continuously learning and evolving how to deliver our Medagogy online.

We used Hop in to deliver the training day this year and aside from a few small hiccups this ran extremely well with good feedback from attendees.

Sponsorship

PiPs is made possible by the support of the North West of England School of Foundation Training & Physician Associates

Mishal- a PiPs “head gardener”

Mishal joined the team in 2019 when she was an FY1.

“When I signed up to attend the PiPs 2019 showcase, I expected a day of powerpoint presentations and to leave having learnt a few things about medical education. In reality, I left with a new perspective about what medical education meant for me.

Empowered by this experience, I went on to design and implement a peer teaching project alongside a colleague who also attended the conference – something I didn’t have the confidence to do before. I felt the PiPs ethos was something that aligned with my attitude to how peer teaching should be: accessible, open and friendly.

Three PiPs conferences later, I am continually amazed at how much we can learn from other people. For me, PiPs is unique in its ability to instill a sense of community and the idea that education is a two-way street. I truly believe it to be an invaluable platform for people to network and be emboldened to develop and grow their own peer-teaching ventures.”

Evaluation

We aimed to evaluate PiPs 4.0 on several levels. Modelled on a community of practice, we use elements of Lave and Wengers evaluation framework to understand the “value” we create.

Below you will find quotes from attendees as well as figures and the value we have identified based on the CoP framework.

Really enjoyable, interactive, fun, insightful and useful for teaching, hopin platform worked well

Really enjoyable and useful day which has made me reflect on my own teaching style and how I gather feedback.

PiPs team members

389

medagogy minutes in the conference

Total attendees

separate sessions

Great and thought provoking think it will likely change how I teach

The day was brilliant from start to finish. Very much interactive and engaging which meant the day flew by. It has challenged me to reflect on my own teaching and has opened my eyes to how I should deliver a teaching session ( …and how not to #deathtopowerpoints )

Outcomes

Using Lave and Wenger’s evaluation framework we were able to identify value from the day from several aspects

>>> see here for the full framework.

Immediate value

Throughout the day, PiPs leads, trainers and event attendees recognised and reported instances where discourse was focussed on solving challenges for members of the community. For instance in “the confidence debate” one attendee discussed past difficulties of evaluating their peer teaching project and was supported to identify new strategies to tackle these.

Potential value

Lave and Wenger’s framework recognises that activities in communities may produce value that is not immediately realised. We surveyed our attendees on the day and over half of them told us that we had changed their perspective on medical education.

Applied value

Change in practice: The PiPs lead team have identified several areas where they might apply what they learnt from planning and delivering the day. We plan to survey attendees in the near future to assess any applied value for them.

Realised value- “improving perfomance”

We won’t yet be able to fully assess this but hope to report back after our next event and following further evaluation with attendees.

Reframing value

Whilst reflecting on planning and delivering the day, the PiPs team recognised the significant value created by being involved in this process. As a result we have redefined what we value as success to include the learning we create as a team. As a direct result of this we plan to try and share these benefits more widely by expanding the team, notably to include other professions and more members of our target cohort.

Hop in was a very very good platform worked really well, best ive seen. Kept focus by doing short sessions and lots of breaks. Cameras on meant engaged throughout although daunting.

I think the PIPS events are welcoming and exactly what is needed for juniors doctors involved in medical education.

Get involved

We are always recruiting foundation team members and have plenty of events to get involved in the coming calendar year.

We are also actively recruiting members from other professions so please get in touch!

Creating interrobang

Posted on January 11, 2021January 11, 2021 by WBYHT

Creating interrobang (?!)

Lewis

Anaesthetic trainee with an interest in medical education; co-founder the Clinical Teaching Fellows Forum, creator of the FRCA National Exam Teaching program, and Visiting Clinical Teaching Fellow at the University of Surrey

Jamie

Visiting Clinical teaching Fellow for Physician Associates at University of Surrey and co founder of The Clinical Teaching Fellows Forum

Roshni

Chief Mentor at Medic Mentor,Portfolio Medical Educator at GKT,QMUL,Lancaster university, University of Limerick and Brighton & Sussex Medical Schools and former NHS Neurological Rehabilitation Consultant.

Anisha

Highly specialist Speech and language therapist in neurorehabilitation. With a background in neuroscience. Current medical students clinical teaching lead for the neurorehabilitation service at St George’s hospital london

Nav

FY2 at St George’s Hospital. Interested in Medical education, Cardiology and eating other people’s food

Mim

Med Ed enthusiast, founder of “PiPs” (peer teachers in practice, North West England- HEE funded initiative supporting early career educators), paeds trainee and WBYHT founder

Jamie

Back in early 2020 an idea rose from the doom and gloom of cancelled conferences and deleted events. This idea was formed to that bring together educators under one roof, all be it virtually, and to be creative with our educational ideas, throwing out the obsolete, keeping the useful and heralding in the new and exciting.

In March 2020 I sent out a call, trying to find like minded educators who had lost out on presenting and hearing about fantastic projects and initiatives going on up and down the country. The result was amazing and a number of great educators and individuals who I had only met on twitter formed a working party. Only in 2020, the year that has seen virtual meetings become reality, could 8 educators from across the country, speciality and background form such a strong group.

This small group formed and started to meet regularly on Zoom to hone our ideas and ensure we were creating an event that we all believed in. Debate within the group flowed and often there were too many ideas for us to take forward. This, for me, has been one of the key lessons that I will take away from this conference: how to create a group identity and idea when so many people in the group are such interesting people that their ideas are great too.

In all, one of the key messages that we all agree upon and felt was of such significance to create the conference was Inter-professional education. Why do we learn and train as individual specialities, and then expect to work harmoniously in tandem with a full understanding of each groups complexities and skillset? I have undertaken a number of simulation sessions, and most of these were other doctors portraying nurses, doctors and medical students. Conversely there has never been an emergency situation at the hospital when I have been surrounded purely by a group of fellow doctors. In order to work together, we need to learn together, and this is where Interrobang really starts.

Find Out More

Mim

I have learnt so much working with Roshni, Jamie, Anisha, Nav and Lewis. It was particularly interesting working with a group that has never met in real life. Doing the so-called “forming, storming and norming” process online felt at times wonderful and others challenging. There were some lovely moments when the group rallied around adversity when one or two of us thought we might have to give it all up.

Communicating on text was particularly challenging, you forget that the team don’t know you well and your tone might be misconstrued. I gained a lot of new skills, memorably the process we went through scoring abstracts designed by Lewis and Jamie.

All in all it’s been marvelous to create something that feels really “us”. Cur!ous, diverse, creative and best of all inter-professional.

AomE

After spending a long time exploring various online platforms AoME stepped forward and offered to help us host the event. We knew we wanted to keep the registration fee to a minimum and with their help we could do this.

We soon realised that although it might be possible to run the event on a complicated tech platform it would take all of the committees attention to do so and it was more important to us to be a part of the event.

Twitter

We met on twitter and have done the majority of our advertising there.

Although at times tricky to coordinate all of us being involved in conversations (between busy rotas) there have been some brilliant moments…

Sign up for the next event

Interrobang

Plan my F3 year

Posted on December 15, 2020December 15, 2020 by WBYHT

Dreaming about f3

Are you hoping to have some time out beyond foundation years? Here’s some useful resources

plan my f3

a twitter resource

A useful link for opportunities around the UK

PlanmyF3

Useful resources

Medic footprints

A career guide for getting into MedEd

Click to go to MF

NHS Jobs.

Find a clinical fellowship

NHSJOBS

BMC Med ed

A journal with best evidence for medical education including literature around careers

BMC

Your idea here

My idea there

our ideas everywhere

covid can’t last forever

work is not just for chritmas its for life

don’t forget your towel

Done a clinical fellowship in med Ed?
Done a PG Cert?
Got a job doing something education related?
Write for us!

What about you?

Do you have an experience or story to tell us?

Help build this space

Write for WBYHT

Project planning

Posted on December 15, 2020 by WBYHT

Planning a local project

Planning can make all the difference between a project being a drag and being really effective

SO you’ve got a burning idea…you’ve noticed that there is a gaping hole in your local service for teaching X. You think you’ve got a brilliant idea to plug that gap. But hang on a minute, have you thought about:

what will happen when you leave?
who’s going to do all that boring admin?
How will we know if it’s all worth it?

Asking ourselves these questions will help ensure we set up a project so it won’t drain our own resources and it’s not just a “flash” in the pan.

That being said, there’s nothing wrong with doing a project for a defined period of time, the success you and your team will get from that will be immeasurable, but do make sure you know what you are setting out to do.

The WBYHT team have created a starting guide to thinking about your project here.

Be a compassionate leader

Planning for success is all about being compassionate to ourselves and our communities. It’s about recognising what is achievable and not pushing ourselves into stress or difficulty.

Get it together

Plan your beginning, middle and end.

Beginning- what’s your vision?, who, what, when, where, why?

Middle – HOW – resources? people? what are your objectives.

End- what have we learnt? what will we share? will this continue? how?

Miro- a planning app for your team

Define your vision

Understand the need

know your destination

Get support

Whatever you are planning make sure you talk to as many people as you can about it. Get a variety of perspectives and an understanding of what you want to achieve

NWLA

look around

Look around at what’s been done before, either in the literature or locally.

Understanding the methods of what you are trying to achieve can be key to setting up a robust programme.

Medical teacher journal

learn from it

Evaluating our teaching has many uses. We can understand our learners better, ourselves and our practice as well as share learning more broadly with stakeholders and the wider educational team.

abc of evaluation

There are many elements of a programme that you can choose to evaluate and each one will have its own approach and things to think about. An example of a varied menu of project evaluation is given below:

learner experience

20%

learner outcomes

40%

your reflection

60%

peer review

100%

Very confident! Evaluating teaching using confidence 1

Posted on December 14, 2020 by WBYHT

Evaluating teaching using confidence

How many times have you been told “if you don’t evaluate it, it never happened?!”. Not only, it never happened, but how do you know how it went? How do you change things for next time?

How often do you get a paper survey after a “teaching” session at work? Can you remember what was on it? Lots of likert scales? (rate this on a scale of 0-5, like-dislike, agree-disagree). Or lots of free text?

Planning how you evaluate your teaching session should be an essential building block of your overall plan.

Thinking about who the learning affects (and how) can be a good place to start to think about evaluation.

Evaluating our teaching can be as simple as assessing what has been learnt or not and how this matches up with our plan for the learners. Millers pyramid is a simple way of thinking about this.

Millers pyramid

Confident?

Miller describes knowing and knowing how as the first steps towards doing. So how do we assess whether someone knows something after we’ve taught them it?

Confidence is a commonly used proxy to describe a learner feeling that they “know how” to do something.

Easy to measure?

There are plenty of examples in the literature of studies where they’ve sought an easy to establish headline measure of learning.

It’s simple and straightforward to ask someone if they have more confidence now that you’ve taught them what you’ve wanted them to learn.

Its an accepted measure

Confidence is something we all understand right? It’s a universal term.

At an education conference if you look through the posters you’ll be sure to find a good number of them have used confidence as the measure of the effectiveness of their teaching.

Self esteem

As teachers, we often want to build our learners up. WBYHT’s medagogy describes an intent to teaching that includes building a learners self esteem.

If we can demonstrate our learners have confidence then this is surely good evidence of this? We have bolstered their confidence.

Confident?

Now you’ve read this, have a look at the arguments against using confidence as a measure of learning

No confidence…

No confidence – evaluating teaching 2

Posted on December 8, 2020February 19, 2021 by WBYHT

“We measure it on likert scales, before and after, some will even try and extrapolate a golden p-value from it”

A vote of no confidence?

Every where you look in medical education research you will find confidence. We measure it on likert scales, before and after, some will even try to extrapolate a golden p-value from it. But have you ever wondered if it’s an acceptable or good measure of learning?

Well you may or may not be surprised to hear that some people have…

Evaluate with confidence

What does confidence mean to you?
What does competence mean to you?
Are these universal terms or is there ambiguity?

Primary Link Secondary Link

what even is confidence?

meaning is everything

Think about it, what is confidence? how do we measure it? Would my understanding of confidence be the same as yours? would my assessment of confidence match yours? Take a look at these resources and make up your own mind.

Roland et al Dunning-Kruger

and what about Competence?

Competence is…

my idea of competence?

your idea?

The GMC’s/ NMC / other governing bodies idea?

Teunnisen and Wilkinson (2012) in describing Erauts view on knowledge building in the work place describe competence as “meeting other people’s (often implicit) expectations”

How do we measure it?

If we’re planning on thinking about competence or confidence as an outcome of teaching how do we measure it? Is it the teachers measure of it? or the “learners” self reported measure of it…?

So what next? If we’re not going to measure “confidence” or competence what do we measure?

Well…that is down to your medagogy.

Planning…

Posted on November 23, 2020April 7, 2021 by WBYHT

Planning a “one-off” teaching session

what’s brought you here?

Why plan?

If you know what you’re talking about, you don’t need to plan right? Well…think about it, the world is full of brilliant people who “know” a lot, but fail to teach well.

Why is that?

Teaching is a skill

It takes more than just knowing, we need to understand and build experience in how people learn. We need to be able to translate, design, communicate, plan and reflect.

Learners need master crafts people who care about them and have the motivation to plan effective sessions and reflect on how they might make them better…

Where to start?

Planning out a session can give you the confidence to deliver something of quality. But where to start?

The tips below will help you to begin to think about planning evidenced based, best practice teaching.

Who?

An easy and important place to start is with the WHO. Who are the learners you would like to teach? The more you know about them and what they need to learn, the more you will be able to make an effective plan.

For example: you have been asked to teach Basic Life Support…how you will do this will very much depend on whether they are, for example:

1) 5-year olds

2) third year nursing students

3) the care staff of a nursing home.

This question is a great example of how the theory of constructivism plays out.

Where?

The educational setting is often forgotten when planning teaching. Make it part of your plan to consider these key issues:

How will I choose and set up the space (real or virtual) to support how I want to interact with the learners (and the learners with each other)?

What impact will this setting have on the learners? For instance, if it’s in A&E will they be able to concentrate? If its in the educational centre, how can I make it authentic? If its online, how can I minimise distractions?

The “what”…objectives

Objectives describe the finer details of “what” learning we want our teaching sessions to deliver. It is essential to be clear to ourselves about the objectives of our session. What do we really want our learners to learn?

There are many tools out there to help you think about this. Learning taxonomies have been used by teachers for decades to think about what kind of learning they want to achieve.

Taxonomies

The WBYHT teaching plan

Teaching plan template

This basic template was created to help you consider your lessons and plan for learning

The how…

Luckily, there is a lot out there to help us with “the how” of delivering learning

Online teaching

There are loads of tools to help us deliver learning online and many of them are free or have free versions. In the tech blog, Nate describes some tips from his ammo box

one-off tech

Maximising interactivity

You will likely have experienced recently what it feels like to be in a lecture where you haven’t been engaged. The person leading the session hasn’t interacted with you in anyway and you’re starting to zone out and look at your phone…

interactive theory

Social learning

At the frontier of learning theory are the social learning theories such as Engstroms activity theory, communities of practice and transformational learning

social learning

Mim

The “affective” /feeling domain is really important to me when I plan lessons. I want people to connect with each other and what’s being taught

Nate

I want to ensure maximum interactivity. I need to plan what I want them to learn and how best to do it interactively

Medagogy- what is that all about?

Posted on November 16, 2020February 25, 2021 by WBYHT

“Medagogy”

It occurred to me today that the language we use around teaching and learning in medical education or “health professions education” is really lacking in spirit.

The term “pedagogy” is one I have circled as a learner myself, hoping to understand this illusive concept. I like that it tries to capture something of the intention of teaching, the philosophy and politics as well as the practice. So why not “medagogy”?

““Pedagogy is more than the accumulation of strategies…it is formed by a view of mind, of learning and learners and the kinds of knowledge and outcomes valued” The Power of Pedagogy- Leach and Moon”

Mim LEach

WBYHT

an example

Royal Local Hospital, ICU

Communities

The Intensive care unit at RLH is renowned for recruiting foundation doctors into anaesthetics and critical care. But why? The unit is fairly unremarkable looking, the staff room has a nice view, the nurses are pleasant and the consultants too but is that enough? The actual answer lies in their medagogy, how they enact their “community of practice” (CoP).

From day one everyone is a valued and respected team member with the potential to learn whatever they want. The FY1 is treated with the same potential as an ACCS trainee already on the program. Nurses are supported equally to gain skills like doing arterial lines and everyone is a key member of a constant process of improving the unit. Above all else they prioritise education, seeing it as an integral part of the days work, not as an add on, or something to eat your sandwiches to. The ICU at RLH has clear medagogical intentions.

Get to know yourself… what are your medagogical intentions?

Teaching should build a learners self esteem

This is my number one, central doctrine for teaching, the one I would hope to impart on anyone embarking on a teaching path.

Set out to build your learners self-esteem
Know your theory from your methods
Get to know your learner, what do they need to learn?
plan- how are you going to establish the best way to teach for your learners to learn
reflect, reflect, reflect- what went well? what didn’t work?

know yourself (clean your “johari’s window” regularly)
Get to know your learner (what do they care about, what do they need?)
Get to know your community (who else will be supporting this learner/s?)
Get your own support (who’s helping you clean your johari’s window?)

What about you?

So what is your medagogy?

What kind of a teacher do you want to be? What do you want to accomplish by teaching? where have you come from (philosophically, geographically, culturally)? where do you want to get to?

Technology enhanced learning 1

Posted on November 16, 2020November 16, 2020 by WBYHT

Heading Level 4

Teaching online is spreading like…well lets just say if it had an R number it would be high. Like all teaching it’s important to carefully consider your aims and methodology. Nate dives into some top tech tips for you here.

“A blockquote highlights important information, which may or may not be an actual quote. It uses distinct styling to set it apart from other content on the page.”

Nate Betteridge

WBYHT tech team

Webinar teaching tips

John Dewey, an American philosopher and education reformer once said “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” Apart from being able to verbalise something much better than I ever could John Dewey highlights a significant point – one which is key to effective online teaching.

Interaction is and should be the cornerstone of online education. It is not good enough simply to share our screen and talk through our presentation. Evidence suggests that we have a MAXIMUM of ten minutes of attention with students/trainees online compared with the ‘normal’ twenty minutes face to face [ref]. What’s even more startling is how rapidly that attention time drops without engagement or interaction.

Dewey

Think about it – how many times will you look at your phone, or glance out of the window when you are in a room with a facilitator stood in front of you? Now imagine yourself sat in front of a computer, in the comfort of your own home where you can turn off the camera and mute your microphone (always remember to mute your microphone). No one is monitoring you – How long do you think you could continue to listen to a webinar where the person is reading off their slides before the temptation to check that latest notification on your phone? I know it certainly would be less than ten minutes for me.

The challenge that comes with transferring teaching to an online platform is continually thinking about how do I engage my learner? This not only allows us to ensure they are still with us but helps to know if the pace you are going is the correct one. The normal feedback mechanisms of reading the room are gone (facial expressions, questions and general engagement), therefore we have to adapt to a new setting.

Tips and tricks

So how do we keep online learning interactive? How do we give the trainees something to do? As John Dewey describes in doing we demand thinking which results in learning

Chat functionality

This is a basic but useful tool. Encouraging questions and then monitoring what comes up is really helpful in allowing real time discussion with the learner.

It assures them that you are interacting and dealing with some of their agendas and not just forcing your own upon them. Even better is when other learners start interacting and answering questions. It isn’t always the most inclusive method however and you may find the same people using this function/answering the questions.

Polls

A helpful way of getting a straw poll about a topic. This can often lead to greater participation as often the poll is anonymous. This will help those more shy learners to start interacting with the group and engage with a question. Polls can help to gain information about how many people feel comfortable with a topic or they can be used to check understanding or the speed of your session.

Hands up/request to speak

A number of online platforms have this functionality which allows for real time, ‘face to face’ discussion or questions. It can be really useful as it breaks up the presenter from speaking all the time – plus it reflects the style of more classroom based teaching. The challenge with this is similar to the chat functionality as it may favour the learner who is more confident and willing to articulate their learning. It also is more time consuming and difficult to speak with every learner (depending on group size).

Padlet / collaborative whiteboards

These are a great tool for encouraging learning together. Padlet.com is a free online whiteboard tool that allows anyone with the link to double click and add their own ideas to it. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t require people to sign up to it before collaborating. The free version you can sign up to has a limit on the number of boards you can use but still gives you enough in my opinion. There are other collaborative whiteboards and tools available e.g. Miro, Trello – but often require users to create a username first. These are a great way for keeping your sessions interactive as it allows for discussion, participation and idea generation in a real time online environment.

Quizzes

I love a Kahoot quiz! This website allows you to create a quiz that’s fun and colourful and can be run remotely with people logging in via their phones or computers. This can be used really well maybe as an icebreaker or at the end of a session to assess learning. Gamification of learning is a really powerful tool and Kahoot does this in a really non-threatening and enjoyable way.

Check out padlet for yourself

padlet

Check out Kahoot…

kahoot

One final thing to say is it’s always worth thinking how does this interactivity help achieve the learning objectives? Interactivity for the sake of it is not advisable either – the sweet spot is using a tool that demands the learner to think about the objective and the learning will occur naturally.