Using an Audience Response System to Promote Flexibility in the Classroom

How audience response system software drives engagement

When an instructor is faced with up to 1,000 students in one class who come from a variety of backgrounds, many that may have nothing to do with the subject being taught, it is up to them to create engagement for in-person as well as remote students. Hapke learned to prioritize audience feedback using Echo360’s audience response systems so she could ensure all students were participating equally in her classes. Each student would respond to her poll questions using devices in person or their keypads online. Echo360 would save the answers so she could find out how her audiences would respond. This allowed her to engage massive numbers of students as if she were teaching a small, intimate gathering. Continue reading to learn more in her interview with Echo360’s Jeff Peterson.

Jeff Peterson: Welcome to EchoCast and welcome to Holly Hapke. Holly is a Senior Marketing Lecturer at the University of Kentucky — Go Wildcats — where she has the daunting task of keeping classrooms — they’re not even classrooms — they have to be auditoriums of students up to 1,000 at a time engaged in learning. Not to get too personal, but I don’t think I even had 1,000 people in my hometown. So Holly is basically teaching Annandale, Minnesota, on a daily basis. But in addition to her day job, which we’re going to find out more about today, Holly is also a very active contributor to industry and Echo360 conferences both here in the States and around the world. So very committed to engaging inspired learning and we are very glad to have her here on the big show today. So, hey, Holly, how are doing?

Holly Hapke: Hi, Jeff. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the time to talk about higher education.

Jeff: Well, we are going to dive into all of that kind of stuff and some specific areas of your application of learning technologies. Specifically, I really want to dig into this 3-in-1 model that I know you’ve been advancing over the last few years. But before we do that, I thought it would be good to give a little bit of a, this doesn’t have to be a whole This Is Your Life thing, but you’ve been in higher education for a while and you’ve really been doing a lot of cool stuff in higher ed, so just for the benefit of everybody tuning in here, give everybody a background on how you ended up in this lane, this path, if you will, and then specifically how you came to be such an advocate for bringing technology to the classroom.

Holly: Well, I won’t go back to the very beginning, but being at the University, just finishing up my 15th year here, I had taught smaller classes. So it wasn’t that I didn’t always start out as an auditorium, extra-sized classes. But it moved me or shifted me about 10 years ago to the space of an old auditorium. And in that space, we had 700 people and this auditorium had lots of distractions. I can remember the first time I actually tested Echo360. I just wanted to—so many students would leave the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in the US and they would travel that whole week. And they would never get my Tuesday lecture. So I wanted to live broadcast my Tuesday lecture and let the students that needed to travel still engage with my content, because they kept on missing that Tuesday lecture. So in the fall, and this is almost a decade ago, I asked 100 students, can you volunteer to log in and do this? This was way before all of this other stuff. I needed a team of people to help me get my camera, my microphone, everything around just that one 75-minute broadcast. It was a lot of clunkiness. Tripods and big cameras and I know a lot of things have changed in 10 years. But I can remember why I wanted to do it for my students and it was flexibility. And it’s still flexibility today.

Now my space, again, has evolved into this whole 3-in-1. So I still have on any given day around 400 people in person and around 400 online, and then I have another 200 that are doing it offline. So that’s where my 3-in-1 comes from. It allows my students to have a choice to be in person live with me, with their peers, streaming live anywhere in the world, but they’re at least engaging with me, my TA, and their peers, or they could do it offline and are on-demand, and they still can engage with their peers if they happen to be there at the same time.

Jeff: If you can remember back, what were your instructor colleagues? Were they in the same space as you? Were you all trying to figure this out? Or were you, by nature of the classes that you had and your situation, was it specific where you were out there trying to figure this out on your own? Or did you all feel like you were in the same boat?

Holly: It did level the playing field. But back then, no, I was that forerunner. I had been sage on the stage. I mean, I had my own stage. I had a pipe organ behind the curtain and chandeliers. I had my own pulpit. There were a lot of distractions. But any person who has taught in that space, you know there’s lots of distractions. So I had to always figure out how I was going to engage the students in that space. My other educators, they thought I had anything with video, even back then, was you’re going to record yourself and actually let somebody else record you? And I had done another platform a couple years prior to that, back in 2010, when I went on maternity leave. And they were like, you’re really going to post that so people can see it? You’re just going to give it away? It was a very different time period. And I think back, even in 2010, so a whole decade and a couple years later, we’ve been through Covid, and more of my colleagues, including me, are trying to figure out, how can we continue to make this video system software solution better for our students?

Jeff: Even to speak of it just as video, you have taken the video platform and really extended it into things. We’ve mentioned a couple times this 3-in-1 model. Tell us a little bit about it and specifically, because I know you’re a very humble person, but just so you know Holly and the University of Kentucky, they are the #1, I was told, #1 polling university for Echo360 in the world. So nobody is utilizing the depth of the interactive applications as much as you are. So with that setup, explain to us what the 3-in-1 model is and what those applications are that help animate the model.

Holly: The model really begins with the student in mind. It’s very student-centric. The approach is the flexibility of time and space on the student side as opposed to maybe the institution or the instructor. But I have given the option, or choice, to the student. It hasn’t always been that way. Even in the midst of Covid, when 100% everyone had to be online, but does that online mean synchronous or asynchronous? And we had a whole discussion about what is the benefit of asynchronous and synchronous and using other platforms. But all throughout Covid, I still had kept the 3-in-1 model. So pre-Covid, post-Covid, I kept this 3-in-1 model. Because there is value in having a live session with physical people in your space and having that interaction. And I poll them for that information as well. But the same thing that people outside of that physical space, but that time element. We’re all in it together. So I asked a question today about the inelasticity and elasticity of goods. Here’s a list of nine items. I can throw it into the back channel, get students to quickly vote on it. At the same time, to make it more summative, I can actually add a poll question on the fly as well, and get the audience response in there and they can see it. I will tell you that it is a great day when I get, when the grade comes up and everyone has got the correct answer. I’m sad to say that I do not—I lavish those days and I celebrate those days. But even today, when I thought it was a slam-dunk question, and I’m a gambler, and I thought everyone should know what this is. I had just been talking about it. We just did an exercise about it. And I put, it’s a break-even point. And I put as a distractor bubble-point. So I said really? And then somebody will message me later and say, the computer wouldn’t accept my answer so I put the other answer. So they just picked the ones on top or what was it. So I love the activities of polling because I can quickly assess the students on content, but priceless when it comes to people’s opinions.

The students can now—I can put a Likert scale up there—you strongly agree or you strongly disagree. And then you can justify your answer. So that many students, whether they’re physical in that space or somewhere else, they’re not going to holler out from the balcony what their opinion is about being neutral on something. But they will quickly type in their response, and I can go to either the strongly agree or strongly disagree or look at the neutrals. So I love the audience response system built into the platform. It’s video capturing it. Then the students that are offline, they can see that interaction. They can see the students’ feedback and comments on their own time. And then, of course, the students can go back if they missed something that I might have covered during that live 75-minute session.

Jeff: You bring up a really good point. Beyond the spatial harmony that you can create using this technology, whether somebody’s in the auditorium, which by the way, this auditorium sounds great. I got to visit. It sounds like quite the setup. But beyond the practical benefits of keeping the people in the same time and on the same script, are there other issues or other benefits, so either on the glass half empty or glass half full side that you’re seeing for using this technology and being so tuned into the different ways that young people are learning and needing to learn based on time and space that have emerged?

Holly: I started doing some research around UDL, universal design theory. The learning piece of that is to make sure you’re looking at a couple of different—the model includes a lot about adaptability. So I know we haven’t really mentioned accessibility. My students are from—it’s a Principles of Marketing class—so you have students that are not business majors. This may, in fact, be their only business class that they take beyond Economics in the College of Business. And we are a College of Business and Economics college, so because they are less likely to take any other business classes, so a student from Social Work or Nursing or Design or Communications, they’re coming to take this class and they’re bringing a lot of different backgrounds. So just the different majors from the different colleges that are coming in, it’s a very diverse population. I also am seeing a lot more sophomores. This is a 300-level class. It’s always been a junior-based class. So over the last 10 years, because students are bringing more credit hours, we’re getting more sophomores. So I’m seeing a variety of majors and minors, but I’m also getting a little younger audience. And I still have a diverse population of international students. Not to take a back step from accessibility, but my disability students are also in that whole mix. So when you look out and think, oh, wow. Yeah, I can video capture. Yeah, I can poll it. But now what am I doing to help all of us make my content more accessible, my content live to them, and making sure it’s capturing or the transcript is available and they can read through it afterward? It helps both me and all my students.

Jeff: It makes a ton of sense. I love everything about that. We could talk all day. But we can’t. So I’m actually going to wind this down here and ask you our last question. This is a little segment that we call Inspiration Point. What would be the biggest piece of advice or biggest lesson that you’ve learned along the way that you would impart to somebody else?

Holly: That is a very loaded question, Jeff, so thank you for asking your guest. But one thing I always want to stress is that if I could just reach one, then I’ve done my job. So for someone who has, for years, taught thousands of students, if I’m only reaching one, then I’ve done my job. You can take a step back and you don’t have to have massive sizes of classes like I do. You don’t even have to have 50 students. If you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, I’m going to reach one, then you’re doing your job. No one says that we have to accomplish everything within that space at all times for all people. If I’m reaching that one. And I will say that we’re always learning because we’re always getting tested. Every day is a new test, but when you can reach that one, and that aha moment when someone sends an email to you or a group chat and says, hey, I saw what you were talking about. I saw that. It helped me be a better consumer. So I think that’s the question. I think I still have a lot of questions and my students do, too, but to know that you’re reaching the one, you have to use all the stuff. I really could not do my job and do it effectively without my sophomore platforms, my captures, my polls. I just couldn’t.

Jeff: Wow. I love that and it’s that whole starfish adage, and you’re reaching many more than just one. But I love the spirit of your answer there, as long as it’s just one. Ah, it’s always just the starfish. Well, hey, thank you Holly Hapke, for joining us here on EchoCast and sharing your creativity, your obvious commitment and dedication to getting through to those learners and your commitment to inspire learning. We’re going to let Holly go now, but everybody else stick around for a quick demonstration now of some of the applications that Holly was just talking about. And you can also go to Echo360.com for more episodes and resources to create your own inspired learning experiences.

Announcer: Here’s a quick demonstration of an Echo360 solution related to this episode of EchoCast. Reach out to us at Echo360.com to learn more.

Fred: Hi, this is Fred with Echo360. This is just a short demonstration video to show you how to use our embedded video polling functionality. First I’m going to show you how an instructor would create what we call an interactive media, which consists of a video with some polls embedded inside of it. Then we’ll take you through how that ties into an assignment inside the learning management system and what it looks like from the student perspective, and then lastly, we’ll show you where the data appears for the instructor to view.

I am logged into Echo360 and I’m on my library page. I have this video on Pinwheel Galaxy, a short demonstration video. What I’m going to do is go ahead and add a poll to it. So click add poll. And you can just slide this little slider here to the point in the video where you want to add that poll. So let’s say I want to add a poll here. Now I can do a couple of things. I’ll see a bank of all of my existing polls that I’m the owner of and I’ll also see polls that have been shared with me. So this enables you to collaborate with others and integrate their activities into your course assignments. You also can search and filter to more easily find the content you’re looking for. In this case, I’m going to go ahead and create a new poll. So I’ll click create poll and we’ll do a multiple-choice poll. So the poll’s going to appear 14 seconds into this video and we’re going to ask the question, “What type of galaxy is the Pinwheel Galaxy?” We’ll populate three choices and we’re going to set the correct answer as letter A. And we’ll go ahead and click done. You can add as many polls as you want, but for now, we’re just going to add that one, and we’ll save it. So now this poll appears under the embedded polls tab. So I can see all of the polls that I’ve added to this video, and this one is at 14 seconds.

Now we’re going to go into the learning management system and I’m going to demonstrate this in Moodle. We’re in this Weather and Climate course and I’m going to add a new activity, so new assignment, and call it Pinwheel Galaxy, and we’re going to click here, the Echo360 embed button, and I’m going to select this interactive media. Again, interactive media means that it’s a video in your library that has at least one poll embedded into it. So I’m going to pick this one, keep the defaults, insert it, and set it as online text. 

All right, so now we’re going to switch and go in as the student. The student’s going to open up Pinwheel Galaxy. Now you’ll see that I’m able to play the video and I’ll show you that I’m able to navigate up to where that poll exists. If I wanted to, I can advance, but I can’t advance beyond where the poll is. At this point, it’s going to take me to the location where the poll is, and if I want to actually get a bigger view, I can click this button to pop it out into a new window so I have a little bit more space. So what type of galaxy is the Pinwheel Galaxy? I’m going to pick letter A and submit that. I immediately see that I got it correct and now I’m able to continue watching this video.

Now let’s go back in as the instructor. So back in my library, I do have the option to filter, so I want to filter on type. I only want to look at my interactive media. Here is the session here. So we’ll go ahead and open this up. All right. And I’m going to see this polling tab. I know that I put that in my Weather and Climate course in the LMS and I can see a list of all of the polls, so I’m going to look at the poll that I created. It’s going to show me the results. So I can see the aggregate data here. One response. It was correct. Then if I scroll to the bottom, I can see that the response was by George Miller and he got it correct. So the instructor has that data. We will be adding additional functionality, including exporting that data and some other options in the very near future.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to EchoCast. For more information on these and other inspired learning solutions, visit us at Echo360.com.

Response systems allow instructors to poll an audience and engage students of all types

Whether a student is learning in person with Holly Hapke, online synchronously, or online asynchronously, they are sure to stay engaged with the use of audience response systems. Her success is just one example of what the Echosystem does for organizations across the world. Whether it’s bringing together students from various locations or keeping them engaged using audience response software, Echo360 solutions take your ideas for classroom success to the next level. Request a demo to learn more.