GoSoapBox In Review: Taking Student Engagement To A New Level

GoSoapBox In Review: Taking Student Engagement To A New Level

Occasionally, Markus and I receive a request to revisit a previous technology tool, so this month we will be looking at GoSoapBox In Review.

If you are looking to enhance your current classroom response system, you might consider GoSoapBox. GoSoapBox is a powerful multi-function tool that can help you engage students as well as conduct formative assessments to evaluate students understanding of course concepts.

GoSoapBox events help you gain real-time insight into student comprehension with several useful tools, such as (1) Social Q&A, (2) Confusion Barometer, (3) Quizzes, (4) Polls, and (5) Discussions. Let’s briefly look at each of these GoSoapBox features.

Social Q&A: Social Q&A is a way to manage student questions that you do not have time to answer in class. Social Q&A is a technology feature that is similar to a student raising their hand in class but without the disruption. As questions are posted, other students can determine which questions are also most important to them. This lets the instructor know what questions to address in class, which is especially useful when class time is limited.  After class, you can also post answers to the questions that were not covered in class.  With GoSoapBox, you can easily address all student questions, in or out of class, which supports all students throughout the course.

Confusion Barometer: The Confusion Barometer is a feature that lets students communicate when they are confused or when they need the instructor to slow down on a topic discussion.  GoSoapBox engages even the quietest voice in the class, especially when the anonymity feature is enabled.  The instructor sees a visual representation that identifies the number of students who are confused, compared to the number of students who understand.  It is always better to know early in the learning process that a student is off-track, rather than find out later, such as on an exam.

Quizzes: The Quizzes features let the instructor created multiple-choice or short answer questions. Students can take the quizzes either during or outside of class. Results can be exported into a spreadsheet to analyze student performance or apply points to the grade book. Quizzes are a great formative assessment tool to identify what students understand or may need to review further.

Polls: Similar to clicker devices and other polling technology, such as Polleverywhere (September 2018, August 2015), the GoSoapBox Polls feature engage students in course lectures and activities while displaying results in real-time.

Discussions: Discussions allow instructors to create topics for students to research and debate.  Discussion can be set up where participants can post anonymously or where student responses can be identified for grading.  The anonymous feature in GoSoapBox is easy to deploy by a discussion event.

For the instructor, GoSoapBox makes it easy to export data to a spreadsheet, capturing data for the entire class or by individual students.  GoSoapBox’s reporting feature makes it easy to identify students who may be getting off track or confirm which students have a solid understanding of the material.

GoSoapBox is compatible with all web browsers and most devices. It is easy for students to join using an event code. Best of all, GoSoapBox is free for smaller classes (30 or less), but upgrades are available for larger class sizes.

If you are excited to explore this fantastic tech tool, you can take a tour of GoSoapBox at https://www.gosoapbox.com/tour or sign up for your free account at https://www.gosoapbox.com/signup.

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