As part of a ‘flipped classroom’ pedagogy, Zhiqiong Chen uses VeVox to increase in-class participation. Zhiqiong expects students to arrive at seminars already equipped with some understanding of the topic and instead uses the seminar as a space to test student knowledge through a range of activities. In addition to VeVox, Zhiqiong also uses Talis ElevateLink opens in a new window and Microsoft TeamsLink opens in a new window to encourage in-class participation. This gives students more opportunities to communicate with Zhiqiong and with eachother verbally and non-verbally, using their first or second language.

During seminars, Zhiqiong uses Vevox PowerPoint polls to check students’ understanding of the language, mainly the correct use of characters, vocabulary, grammar, and sometimes reading comprehensions as well. By allowing students to answer anonymously, Vevox helps to increase participation in class as students can answer questions without fear of embarrassment when making mistakes.

While students work on each question, Zhiqiong can see how many students have participated and how many have answered the questions by which she can adjust the answering time for a particular question. Through the instant data on students’ responses together with the percentage of responses to each option, Zhiqiong then decides how much detail should go into each question and targets the students’ misconceptions, which makes her seminars more student centred. At the same time, students can position their performance in the whole class through these data.