David Strafford – @davidstrafford
Sheffield Hallam University
Being professional, active and experienced on Social Media is vital for young professionals in the Events industry, and equally therefore for the undergraduate students on the Event Management course. As a result, there is a drive from some of the Events teaching team to use Twitter as part of their teaching.
One of the channels available to tutors, is to use the Twitter poll function to run a mock quiz to allow the students to test their knowledge on certain subjects and topics, particularly as part of the revision for summative assessments. Twitter allows the students to participate in their own time, in their own space, away from university and in less formal environments – a feature which can encourage the students to underpin and reinforce the formal teaching they have received in class.
The module being used for this trial is Event Safety & the Law, where students are required to learn facts, figures and information ahead of a multiple choice summative phase test. There is a lot of information to take on board for the students, much of which consists of intricate law-based facts – and the techniques involved are much more memory based than more subjective reports and essay writing the Events students are more accustomed to. The multiple choice phase test is externally accredited by the Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (IOSH) and is widely recognised as an industry qualification. In short, it is a phase test the students want to pass, but find very difficult to do so.
A mock quiz, consisting of 20 multiple choice questions, operated using the Twitter poll function, will be distributed on Twitter in the days leading up to the Phase Test. It will feature very similar question types to the Phase Test, to ensure that the assessment is at the correct level. Students will be able to vote as to which answer they think is correct, and they will be able to instantly see which is the most popular answer. The actual answers will be tweeted out, after 24 hours of the polls being open. The students should be able to see if they voted for the most popular answer and if they didn’t then they can re-check their learning. Formative self-assessment is at the heart of this activity, with the votes being anonymous, so no-one but the student will know whether they voted for the correct answer or not.
After the phase test has been taken, the students will be encouraged to respond to a short quantitative survey, to evaluate the effectiveness of the mock quiz on twitter and how whether it genuinely aided their learning and formative assessment. The results of the survey will be presented at this session, with ideas being sought for development and future use.