Ready player one: using Vevox to elicit student participation in lectures

Abstract

With the pivot back to on-campus teaching, many students find themselves in an unfamiliar learning environment: the lecture theatre. This can result in low rates of participation in lectures, especially with a diverse student demographic, including English as an Additional Language students. This can result in exclusion from learning for these students, as well as many students feeling nervous about participating in a lecture format. This case study looked at using the education technology Vevox to elicit student participation in a lecture format. Vevox was used to embed multiple tasks into a series of lectures with a cohort of third-year Engineering students. Vevox was found to be effective at eliciting high levels of participation, although some tasks had higher participation rates than others. An evaluation survey was also conducted with students where they responded positively to the implementation of Vevox in the lectures. Finally, the case study discusses potential applications and limitations of Vevox, with a recommendation that similar research could be carried out across multiple courses and cohorts to improve efficacy.