Polling technologies (Free)

In education it is important to gather data from students for the sake of an educator's efforts to be effective and efficient through their coursework. Evaluation of activities and feedback from the students can drastically influence needed changes in a course. Through technologies available, it is possible for students to give feedback easily, anonymously and conveniently. In some cases, the rate of participation in questionnaires increased by 80% by utilizing methods that could be embedded in the LMS user-interface (Park, 2014). This can significantly impact the usefulness of data collected by the majority of the student body. There are many services available that have a robust set of features, but often come at a price which are often a deterrent for educators who wish to poll their students. In this short list, three services will be listed and explained that are currently completely free to the end user.

The first and most notable is Google Forms, which is part of Google Drive, a robust set of solutions that are available to anyone willing to create an account with Google. Google Forms allows the creation of a form with standard types of questions, such as likert, scale, grid, multiple choice, free-text, etc., that will automatically create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets (another Google product similar in design and functionality to Microsoft's Excel). With a little bit of formatting rules and formulas, the Google Sheet can be made to create reports than can allow an educator to quickly and discernibly determine trends and side-by-side comparisons on an ongoing basis. Reports and results generated can be shared with students to increase student responsibility toward their success and appeal to meta-cognitive methods of learning, as well as allowing the instructor to better understand the cognition profile of the cohort (Haddad & Kalaani, 2014). The utilization of this tool can be simply be embedded in LMS by utilizing tools provided by Google, or by citing a link in the LMS. The visualization of the survey results can be shown with the embed tools in Google Sheets.

The next tool is called mQlicker, which is another web based service that could be embedded within

an LMS. This particular service is also completely free and exports to an Excel for recording purposes. One fantastic feature of mQlicker is that it allows surveys or questionnaires to be interactive during a lecture, online presentation or over a long span of time. The results from surveys can be embedded within PowerPoint presentations and can be utilized by speakers in real time, to aid instructors in designing the talk to best suit the audience. MQlicker also offers a good deal more question and answering options that utilize java, such as drag and drop. The surveys are completely optimized to be used on a mobile device, so learners can participate in surveys on the go, or on their own mobile devices during a lecture, presentation or as they are notified, as well as within an LMS. Students have reported that they prefer to utilize their own devices for these types of interaction and are receptive to the functional use (Ada, 2014).

Thirdly, PollDaddy is another service that is a blend of the former two. It is a paid service, but does allow users to use a free account with some limited options. Results can be embedded in blogs, websites or an LMS and it has a very simple drag-and-drop way of creating surveys. The free service does limit the export feature, but the reporting methods are robust and will give an instructor and the students a worthwhile visual to analyze.



References

Ada, M. B. (2014). Fostering Students'‘Use My Own Device'Attitude: Developing All-in-one Mobile learning Application. International Journal of Technology and Educational Marketing (IJTEM), 4(1), 15-33.

Haddad, R. J., & Kalaani, Y. (2014). Google Forms: A Real-Time Formative Assessment Approach for Adaptive Learning.

 Park, J. Y. (2014). Course evaluation: Reconfigurations for learning with learning management systems. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(5), 992-1006.

Using Google Tools for Healthcare Education

Inception on February 14, 2005, YouTube has seen an enormous boost in popularity over the last 12 years. At the latest rate measured in 2016, over 300 hours of video is uploaded every minute, 5 Billion videos are watched each day and there is a typical visitor list of 30 million people everyday (YouTube, 2017). While generally geared towards entertainment, the use of creating, uploading and sharing video content with users has been extremely useful for education. The benefits of YouTube's use are evident in numerous bodies of evidence. At-risk nursing students receiving faculty facilitated remediation through YouTube passed their coursework at a rate of 91%, and 80% of the at-risk students passed the higher-standard NCLEX exam on their first attempt (Corrigan-Magaldi, Colalillo & Molloy, 2014). Alternatively, in review of healthcare information posted on YouTube, the vast majority of published information is false or misleading, so diligence must be done to promote information that are correct and validated for the layperson and healthcare learners (Madathil, Rivera-Rodriguez, Greenstein & Gramopadhye, 2014). Urging students and laypersons to ensure sources are validated and evidenced based is important.


 Google Drive as a suite is a powerhouse of collaborative uses. Google Drive encompasses Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms, Drawing and Google Photos. The combination allows a create suite comparable to Microsoft Office that is available to utilize and share online. The use of Google Drive for education is growing everyday and is becoming primary for many K-12 teaching methods, saving school districts an enormous amount of money. The use of Google Drive in Healthcare education serves to promote critical thinking skills in students when students tackle case studies collaboratively (Rowe, Bozalek & Frantz, 2013). The results of collaboratively working on case studies promoted the students perception and role in their education to a meta-cognitive level, taking initiative in their efforts to learn (Rowe, Bozalek & Frantz, 2013). The use of Drive promotes interaction and communication among students.

Google Scholar has become an immense catalog of search tools. In recent years Google Scholar has enabled the ability for students or learners to create an arsenal of libraries and databases that students have access to. By simply going to settings on your Google Scholar Page a learner can add all databases and libraries that they have access to for the sake of being able to search them all at once.

 
References

Corrigan-Magaldi, M., Colalillo, G., & Molloy, J. (2014). Faculty-facilitated remediation: A model to transform at-risk students. Nurse educator, 39(4), 155-157.

Rowe, M., Bozalek, V., & Frantz, J. (2013). Using Google Drive to facilitate a blended approach to authentic learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(4), 594-606.

Madathil, K. C., Rivera-Rodriguez, A. J., Greenstein, J. S., & Gramopadhye, A. K. (2014). Healthcare information on YouTube: a systematic review. Health informatics journal, 1460458213512220.

 YouTube. (2017). YouTube Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

Web 2.0 Technologies

Emerging technologies on the Internet have created a diverse and specialized delivery of knowledge and continue to create even more opportunity for learning to occur. In this short segment we will be looking into 3 Web 2.0 Tools that could be used to reach your audience and to enhance learning opportunities by utilizing engaging and rich visual technology and experiences: Infographics, Social Media and Prezi.

Infographics are imagery that are constructed to appeal to the eye, and are easy to share syndicate and to compress important information. Data visualization is nothing new in the grand scheme of things, visual portrayals have served in the past in the roles of charts and graphs.While visualizing data is beneficial, imagery served in this regard will only fulfill that need, but retention will not be enhanced. In the case of Infographics, a story is told with the aid of imagery, to enhance not just understanding but also retention, "details of a story or a picture that are consistent within an existing schema are more likely to be remembered than those that are not" (Borkin, Vo, Bylinskii, Isola, Sunkavalli, Oliva & Pfister, 2013). In the results of a memorability experiment with the use of infographics, the visualizations of a story are intrinsically memorable across various kinds of people, and work much better than common types of visualization such as graphs and charts (Borkin, Vo, Bylinskii, Isola, Sunkavalli, Oliva & Pfister, 2013). The use of imagery should be used to make the most important piece of information to stick in the reader's memory.

Social Media has become a staple to the modern person, and it is now being used as a medium to transfer information and be an opportunity to learn. Acting as a much more fun and interactive means of archiving than a typical blog, Twitter and Facebook offer the ability for learners to engage as an active role in the learning activity, as well as benefiting from educational followership. Additional use of YouTube, citations from other resources on the web, or the combined use of a blog have been termed as Micro-blogging (Gomez-Sanz, Ortego & Pavón, 2016). Social media is currently being referenced in formal educational settings as a means of assignments at a rate of over 60%, and is also being utilized as a platform to create content at a rate of 30% (Moran, Seaman & Tinti-Kane, 2011). It would only make sense to harness the capability of Social Media for the sake of education given its immense popularity and availability. Facebook even allows the capability of controlling the audience and how the audience can interface, post  and interact within a course (or page). It also has build in syndication and alerts. 

The days of standard presentations in PowerPoint and Keynote with the occasional animation are now a thing of the past. The extensive use of the Internet to provide educational material to learners has created a need to present in a visually appealing way that will keep people more engaged than traditional methods. Prezi has developed a way to combine all the rich and dynamic features found in Web 2.0 tools into one place. Utilizing YouTube, Online Pictures, and even shockwave files it is capable of creating a dynamic and interactive experience that can take an infographic concept to the next level. Taking use of its platform Prezi has the capability to create an automatic or self navigated presentation with sound, zoom, spacial relationships and motion to create a visually appealing and interactive experience for the end user. Presentations can be easily shared and viewed online without the need to install special software.



References

Borkin, M. A., Vo, A. A., Bylinskii, Z., Isola, P., Sunkavalli, S., Oliva, A., & Pfister, H. (2013). What makes a visualization memorable?. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 19(12), 2306-2315.

Gomez-Sanz, J. J., Ortego, Á., & Pavón, J. (2016). BoloTweet: A Micro-Blogging System for Education. In Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning, 6th International Conference (pp. 53-60). Springer International Publishing.

Moran, M., Seaman, J., & Tinti-Kane, H. (2011). Teaching, Learning, and Sharing: How Today's Higher Education Faculty Use Social Media. Babson Survey Research Group.