by Chris Clow & Aalaiya Sawani
Key Takeaways
At the University of Nottingham’s School of Health Sciences, Alison Mostyn, Professor of Pharmacology Education for Health and Director of Teaching and Learning, and James Musk, Assistant Professor of Non-Medical Prescribing, wanted to answer a question that attendance records couldn’t: were students actually understanding what they were learning? For healthcare professionals preparing to prescribe medicines, accessing a lecture or opening a resource is only part of the story. What matters is whether they can apply that knowledge safely in practice.
Polling has helped them find out earlier, while there is still time to revisit a difficult concept, change an explanation, or offer support before the final assessment.
For Alison and James, the challenge was particularly evident in the Non-Medical Prescribing programme, where live teaching, recorded lectures and independent study give students the flexibility to learn around clinical work. But that flexibility also makes it harder for educators to see what is happening beyond attendance and viewing figures.
Those figures show who attended a session or opened a recording, not necessarily who understood the content or who could apply it to a clinical situation. As James explains, “We could see whether students had viewed a recording, but we couldn’t tell whether they had really engaged with it, understood the content or knew how to apply it.”
Students also arrive with different professional backgrounds and levels of prior knowledge. A concept that is familiar to one nurse or physiotherapist may be new to another, making it important to identify where each student needs support.
Alison and James were already using discussions, clinical cases and formative questions to move students beyond passive listening. When the University invited them to join its EchoPoll pilot, they saw a way to make those activities more consistent across live teaching, independent study and revision.
For students, that meant more opportunities to test their understanding and revisit difficult concepts. For the teaching team, responses could reveal when to slow down, explain something differently, or offer individual support.
That matters particularly in non-medical prescribing, where students are practising healthcare professionals studying alongside demanding jobs. James uses EchoPoll assignments combining cases, slides and questions so students can check their understanding at times that work around shifts and other commitments.
In Alison’s live sessions, polling questions are woven through the teaching rather than saved for the end. If many students choose an incorrect answer, she can pause, discuss their reasoning, and approach the concept differently. Answering confidentially via anonymous responses also gives less confident students a safer way to participate. Alison explains, “When lots of students answer a question incorrectly, I don’t see that as a problem. I see it as feedback. It tells me I need to explain the concept differently.”
Polling is often seen as a way to encourage participation and make teaching more interactive. But as Alison’s experience demonstrates, its value goes much further. By providing insight into students’ understanding while there is still time to act, polling allows her to identify difficulties early and adapt her teaching before misconceptions become entrenched. It also means additional support can be directed where it’s needed, rather than waiting until students encounter problems in their assessments.
Alison examined engagement data from two complete non-medical prescribing cohorts alongside students’ summative assessment results, expecting to find that higher polling scores would align with higher final marks. Surprisingly, no significant relationship was found. Instead, consistent engagement with polling showed a strong, statistically significant positive correlation with results in the summative non-medical prescribing assessments. Engagement was also significantly higher among students who passed than those who failed.
While the analysis doesn’t establish that engagement itself causes academic success, it suggests that sustained participation may be more important than getting the answers right. It also provides educators with another way to identify students who may need additional support, creating opportunities to intervene before difficulties become apparent in their final assessments.
For Alison and James, the lesson is not to collect more activity data for its own sake. It is to ask questions that help students show what they understand, then use their responses to decide what support or explanation might help next. That may mean revisiting a difficult concept with a whole class, or directing an individual student towards a particular recording, case or tutorial.
In a programme preparing healthcare professionals to prescribe safely, knowing that students have accessed the material is useful. Seeing how they engage with it, where they struggle and how their understanding develops gives educators something more valuable to act on.
Echo360 is the global edtech leader enabling transformative learning experiences for education and business through the AI-powered Echosystem: the world’s first and only Learning Transformation Platform (LTP) that delivers dynamic creation, engagement, and assessment of education and training at scale worldwide. With innovative authoring (EchoInk), video (EchoVideo), engagement (EchoEngage), assessment (EchoExam), and video-based skills practice and feedback (EchoReflect) the Echosystem is an interoperable, modular platform. Learn more at echo360.com.
