Mentimeter allows students to participate in an easy and direct way in class, which leads to greater interaction and collaboration. Students can easily access Mentimeter through a link and a code that the teacher gives them on the menti.com webpage. When accessed, it is possible to see a visual representation of the performance or opinions of the entire class.
My three stages of using Mentimeter
Normally, the Mentimeter activities I propose have three stages. In the first stage, I use images related to sustainable tourism and statements to which students react unanimously in a positive way. In the second stage, the students are confronted with statements and images related to tourism ‘without rules’. The expectation here is that the students again react unanimously, but now in a negative way. In these two stages, the response can only be either ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’, which helps reinforce unanimous responses.
In the third stage, students are challenged, in small groups of 2-3, to present a proposal that is as sustainable as possible and applies to their local region. One of the main aims of these 3 steps is to make students reflect on the unanimity in the answers and the unanimity of their opinions. The challenge is to get students to review their answers. For this, students are divided into groups of three to reflect on and discuss the concepts associated with sustainability, tourism, and sustainable tourism.
The aim of the third stage is to promote collaborative learning and the exchange of opinions and experiences to reach decisions that are contextualized within their local region and are sustainable and viable. For this purpose, the groups have to present images/schemes and statements related to their proposals and choose their favorite proposals. Finally, the Mentimeter ‘Scales’ option can be used to show the percentage value of each proposal.
After seeing the percentages, students immediately begin to discuss the reasons for choosing a given proposal, the similarities between the proposals, and how the proposals complement each other. The teacher has the role of coordinating students’ involvement. As a result, students feel empowered, as each student gets to contribute to collaborative decision-making and co-construction of meaning.
Step-by-step guide for starting to use Mentimeter
Mentimer is a free application that is easy to use because it is very intuitive. Each user must create an account for which they only need an email account and a password. You may also use your Google account or your Facebook profile for this.
After accessing Metimeter, choose the option “My presentations” and then the option “+New presentation”. After naming your new presentation, choose “New slide”. Here you have several options available (Multiple choice; WordCloud; Open ended; Scales; Ranking; Q&A; etc.). Select a suitable one to meet your objectives.
Mentimeter also allows you to collect visualized data on students’ learning. Furthermore, Mentimeter caters to the tastes of digital natives, giving your class a modern touch and an informal and relaxed atmosphere that encourages students to become more involved in learning.
Text and Image: Henrique Gil, Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco IPCB, Portugal