A Hot Potato in the lecture hall
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5324/njsteme.v10i1.6594Keywords:
Student active learning, large lectures, gameshow, sales pitch, evidence of learningAbstract
We share experiences from using the teaching tool "Het Potet" (Hot Potato).
The purpose of Het Potet is to coerce student activity and collaboration, and to provide insights into the academic understanding and cognition of individual students. We wish to emphasize the usability of Het Potet in contexts where these facets traditionally are absent—like large lectures.
The aim of this report is to explain why (and when) it might be opportune to employ Het Potet in STEM teaching, and to identify factors which may help instructors succeed with the technique in practice. We also report from our own use of Het Potet in a mathematics course for first-year engineering students: Our own experience and a survey (N = 448) indicate that students appreciate this learning activity to a surprisingly large extent.
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