by Jocasta Williams
Microbiology is ideally taught in laboratories. But when hundreds of first-year students need to learn the fundamentals – and the course is offered in both online and blended modes – it’s simply not possible to give every student a hands-on lab experience. As a result, concepts and diagnostic reasoning that would normally be developed through experiments must instead be taught in classrooms or online. Students are asked to interpret images, videos and case scenarios, and to think through laboratory processes they cannot physically perform. The challenge for instructors is finding ways to make those practical skills visible and meaningful without the laboratory environment that would normally anchor them.
At La Trobe University, Carolyn Bell teaches ‘Infections, Pandemics and Epidemics’, a first-year microbiology subject enrolling around 700 students each year. The cohort includes recent school leavers alongside mature-age students returning to study, students with strong biology backgrounds as well as those encountering the subject for the first time, and students taking the subject as a core requirement alongside others who have chosen it as an elective. This mix of backgrounds, experiences and expectations shapes how students participate in class. Many first-year students are still building confidence in speaking up in large groups which means that, without careful design, it is often the most confident voices who dominate discussion.
When a subject is taught at this scale – across online and blended modes, without the anchor of hands-on laboratory work, and to a cohort with widely varying backgrounds – a simple question becomes surprisingly difficult to answer: how do you know what students actually understand?
Early on, Carolyn relied on familiar feedback tools to gauge understanding. In online sessions, students could ask questions through the chat function. In face-to-face settings, they could raise their hands and contribute verbally. Both approaches worked – but only to a point. As in most large classes, participation tended to come from the same small group of confident students. Many others stayed silent, either because they were unsure of their answers or because speaking in front of their peers felt too risky.
Polling offered a way to change that dynamic. Instead of waiting for volunteers, Carolyn could ask every student in the class to respond to a question, giving her a clearer view of how the entire cohort was thinking about a concept. As she explains, polling made it possible to gather feedback that was “more representative of the whole of the cohort than just those select few that were confident enough”.
Polling also proved useful across different learning contexts:
For first-year students, participating in class can feel like a test of competence rather than a learning opportunity. Many worry that asking a question will expose a gap in their knowledge or confirm a fear that they are the only one who does not understand.
Anonymous polling helps lower that barrier. Because responses are not linked to individual students, participants can attempt questions without worrying about how their answers might be judged by peers. The emphasis shifts away from performance and towards exploration.
Carolyn says this anonymity plays an important role in creating psychological safety for students who are still finding their footing at university. In large classes, she notes, there is often a sense of ‘imposter syndrome’ among first-year students – the feeling that they might be the only one who does not understand the material. Polling helps to counter that perception by making the thinking of the entire cohort visible.
The results often reveal something important: confusion is rarely individual. When students see that a substantial portion of the class has chosen the same incorrect answer, it becomes clear that the misunderstanding is shared rather than personal. That realisation can reduce anxiety and encourage students to keep participating.
For the instructor, incorrect answers are particularly valuable. As Carolyn points out, “sometimes incorrect answers are more useful than correct ones because they reveal how students are thinking about a concept and where misconceptions may be forming”.
Over time, Carolyn developed a structured way of incorporating polling into her workshops which she describes as ‘reveal, teach, assess’.
The first step is to reveal student thinking. A poll question is used to expose how students are approaching a concept and whether any misconceptions are emerging. Rather than assuming where the difficulty lies, Carolyn can see it immediately in the pattern of responses.
The next step is to teach to those gaps. If the poll results show widespread confusion, Carolyn pauses and explains the concept again, often from a different perspective. If most students answer correctly, the class simply moves on to the next topic instead of revisiting material unnecessarily.
Finally, a later poll is used to assess whether the gap has been closed. This might take the form of a revision question or an applied scenario that requires students to use the concept they have just explored.
This approach requires a degree of flexibility. Poll results can sometimes show that students understand a concept more clearly than expected and, when that happens, Carolyn simply adjusts the session and moves on. At other times, a poll uncovers an unexpected misconception, prompting an extended discussion. In effect, polling turns the class into a continuous feedback loop between students and instructor, and the instructor has to be prepared to change direction with a moment’s notice.
Carolyn had used polling for years because it felt effective, but EchoPoll has allowed her to see that impact more clearly. The analytics confirm what she had observed in the classroom: polling encourages broad participation and helps reveal misconceptions early. For educators interested in trying a similar approach, her advice is simple – start small with one or two well-designed questions that surface how students are thinking. Once those insights are visible, teaching can respond in real time, closing gaps before they widen. In practice, that turns the classroom into exactly what Carolyn’s model promises: reveal, teach, assess.
