Echo360's Active Learning Platform

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Description

Echo360's Active Learning Platform (ALP) is an online interactivity tool that enables educators to connect with audiences using simple, intuitive polling software and response apps. Lecturers can pose questions to students and immediately collect and view responses of the entire class. Traditional Audience Response Systems utilise clickers (small, handheld units) to collect audience feedback during a lesson to identify student understanding and enhance class participation, however these systems are expensive, cumbersome and limited.With Echo360's ALP, students can use mobile devices to access apps that function as clickers. It allows for a variety of questions, enables student-teacher interactions before, during and after class and enables transformation of lectures for formative feedback and discussion.

For more information on Echo360's Active Learning Platform, please click here.

Echo360's ALP is currently being trialed by UNSW as part of the Blended Learning enabling technologies. You will find more detailed information on how to use Echo360 in your lectures on the following UNSW Learning and Teaching page: UNSW Lecture Recordings Process using Echo360.

Best Practice

Echo360 ALP increases student participation and engagement in class. With this tool, it is possible to identify student understanding, engage students and enhance class participation, making lessons more interactive.

Some suggested uses:

to take attendance
to give in-class quizzes to assess whether students have understood content
to support a flipped classroom by giving in-class quizzes to ascertain whether students have read something that was assigned for class
to facilitate peer instruction

Pros/Cons

Pros:

Voting technology is web or app base
It is 100% native with Microsoft PowerPoint and can also be integrated with LMS
Allows for advance question types and multiple device compatibility
Can be used as a presentation tool
Allows for asynchronous content access
Allows for student to student interaction
Charts and graphs are displayed in real time, with easy reporting and data management

Cons:

Can take an initial investment of time to learn to use the system and manage the data it generates
Monitoring students' understanding and responding appropriately requires on-the-fly flexibility
Some loss of predictability when delivering lectures
Using clickers takes class time, though the amount of class time depends on how you choose to use the technology.

Getting started

Training and Support:

For further help and support with getting started, follow this link: Echo360 Online Help.

A number of video tutorials can be found on YouTube. Please click HERE to go directly to Echo360 Active Learning Platform tutorial videos.

Showcase

In this example Echo360's Active Learning Platform was used to enable real-time collation of responses and feedback.

Gary Velan

To improve engagement in large group teaching, Keepad clickers were used, together with the TurningPoint PPT plugin, to enable interactive quizzes and polling with real-time collation of responses and feedback. Online tools (LectureTools and Echo360's Active Learning Platform) were subsequently used for this purpose. These tools utilise students' web-enabled devices to ask and answer questions before, during and after lectures. Clickers were initially opted for because they are reliable and do not require students to use web-enabled devices, which can be affected by wireless network availability. However, there are limitations imposed by transporting large numbers of clickers, and it is difficult to ensure that all clickers are returned at the end of each lecture. Software tools such as LectureTools and Echo360's Active Learning Platform provide a greater range of question types, as well as greater capacity for students to initiate interactions during lectures. The advantage of having this interactivity in lectures is that it enhances student engagement, which is critical for learning.

Audience response systems are evolving rapidly. Echo 360's Active Learning Platform will continue to be used as it integrates with Moodle, and is currently being trialed by UNSW. This tool also has the potential to facilitate dialogue between students and teachers.

To view a Formative Feedback Session, please click HERE.

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