An Excellence Gateway case study


Published: 09 February 2010

This case study was produced by JISC Regional Support Centre for West Midlands on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.

Sector relevance: Further education colleges, specialist colleges

Keywords: Teaching, training and learning; blended learning; e-learning materials; lesson; checking understanding; giving feedback to learners; working with groups; formative assessment; reviewing learners' progress; achievement; learning outcomes; progress monitoring; value for money; inspection preparation; evidence requirements; staff development; 14–19; student; young people

Summary

Following unsuccessful trials with commercial voting systems, Solihull College developed its own solution, EasyVoter – a plug-in voting system for the Moodle virtual learning environment (VLE).

About Solihull College

Solihull College logo Solihull is a further education college that offers a wide range of academic and vocational qualifications. Based at two campuses, the college also has a Construction Centre with a £31 million redevelopment of the Blossomfield Road campus currently underway.

The college has won numerous nationally recognised awards and has CoVE status for Retail and Customer Service, as well as Health and Social Care.

The challenge

Paul Dyson, ILT Development Manager and Steven Ball, Educational Technologist experimented with commercial student response systems with little success. They found the equipment expensive, time consuming to set up and unintuitive.

Paul says:

“The accompanying software was difficult to use – the tutors, who are busy with their everyday roles, simply didn't have time to get to grips with the system, and do all the administrative side such as setting up the student registers and quizzes ahead of each lesson.

“We attended exhibitions and saw lots of fancy, hi-tech solutions but wanted something very simple that wouldn't depend on unreliable, battery operated handsets.”

The activity

Paul and Steve developed an integrated plug in for Moodle, called EasyVoter – an online voting system that uses the existing hardware, ie the user keyboard, as the primary input device. Effectively, any IT room housing computer stock can quickly be transformed into an interactive voting environment.

Paul says:

“The idea behind using Moodle was to try and encourage more tutors to use the VLE. Ofsted have expectations of VLE use in the classroom, so if we could add value to our VLE and get the whole class engaged, the system could potentially satisfy some of those expectations. Also, it meant that our tutors, who are familiar with Moodle, didn't have to learn new software and hardware.”

Combining their practitioner and programming backgrounds, Paul and Steve designed EasyVoter to be as intuitive as possible. They anticipated some of the problems faced by the tutors and rather than creating system error messages to deal with those problems, Paul and Steve worked hard to remove the barriers by making the process simple.

Paul says:

“With commercial systems, we found problems with the handsets timing out, and students trying to respond using an unavailable option (such as hitting the ‘D’ key on the handset when the quiz only has an ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’ option). EasyVoter only delivers the permissible options so Moodle very much controls the structure.”

For tutors, from a set-up point of view, the student registers are already in place in Moodle so there is no need to create these in advance. It also means staff do not have to carry the kit around with them.

The outcomes

EasyVoter has the following features and benefits:

  • scalable multiple choice quizzes;
  • text input ability;
  • simple yes/no, true/false and numerical responses;
  • the ability to easily embed video and Flash files;
  • the ability to demonstrate responses by reveal (by name or anonymously) to modify learning;
  • the ability to insert images, video, diagrams and flowcharts; and
  • the ability to save results of voting activity for data interrogation and target settings.

Paul adds:

“It's great for quick knowledge and polling qualitative points of view. However, it by no means replaces the quiz function in Moodle, as this is already a very sophisticated, formative assessment tool.”

EasyVoter was trialled with over 300 staff who responded very positively – particularly, says Paul, when the plug-in was pitched as an alternative tool for whole-class engagement. He adds:

“We have also made EasyVoter more accessible than standard commercial voting systems. The questions are delivered to the local desktop (great for those with visual impairments) rather than just one front-of-class projection.”

The impact

The result is an intuitive system which is easy to manage and has saved the college money. EasyVoter has been very well received amongst staff and offers a potential positive impression for future Ofsted inspections.

Paul says:

“High quality teaching involves whole class engagement. We wanted a system that allows tutors to easily create questions, deliver them to the user desktop, manage voting feedback and ensure every participant is included in the learning process. EasyVoter will provide evidence that students have understood what they are supposed to achieve in line with the session objectives. Hopefully the use of EasyVoter will contribute towards our aspiration of outstanding classroom delivery.”

For other learning providers who may be considering a voting system, Paul offers the following advice.

  • Think very carefully about commercial systems – sometimes the sales pitch can differ from what the products can actually do.
  • Be wary about persuasion to use mobile phones for text responses, particularly in terms of cost for quizzes involving lots of questions.
  • Don't rush to get the sales people in – download something that's free first. Even if it's not what you are looking for, it gives you a good idea before parting with your organisation's money.
  • Be critical and find something that suits your organisation. In the current climate, getting value for money is more important than ever.

Paul and Steve plan to upgrade EasyVoter and will continue to add to it, taking into account feedback from the Moodle community and the college's students.

EasyVoter is available to download via Solihull College's Moodle site (see link, below).

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Disclaimer: The Regional Support Centres (RSC) and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) support the development of educational e-learning. In the case study, we may refer to specific products, processes or services by trade name, trademark, manufacturer or otherwise, or link to websites or supporting material. Such references are not endorsements or recommendations and should not be used for product endorsement purposes.

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