The Kahoot! Session

The inaugural DICE Cafe session

“Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that makes it easy to create, share and play learning games or trivia quizzes in minutes”

(Kahoot, 2023)

It is used in classrooms, offices and at home, you can find out more about Kahoot! here.

The first session brought together academics who were interested in using Kahoot! but had mixed experiences of it. Some had used it frequently, but only with small classes and limited features, whilst others had never used it in the classroom.

The Business School had purchased a single licence and in this session we started to explore what it could do. It is very intuitive, if you don’t know where to start there is a wealth of existing Kahoots to use or draw inspiration from, you can also pick from a range of templates to get you started. There is a nice range of question styles designed to test knowledge or collect opinions, it’s supported by AI too and can generate questions if you provide a topic. A useful tool if you’re overwhelmed with options or don’t have a clear direction at the start. Linked to your question you can also add media (image, sound, video), these are simple and straightforward to add, and help to tailor your Kahoot!

After exploring we discussed different ways we have or might want to use Kahoot! with students. The multiple choice style of questions works well as a knowledge checker in the classroom, suggestions included using it to check if students knew details from the handbook (such as the assessment deadline), and the podium feature is a good way to get students competitive about knowing a subject through short quizzes. One thing we knew was we wanted to use it in the new Department wide Personal Tutoring events, but at this stage we weren’t sure how.

The outcome of this meeting was that we all agreed we liked Kahoot! and there was potential for further use. Together we applied for four additional subscriptions from the College Teaching and Learning Innovation fund. A few weeks later we received the news that our application had been successful.

Our application in a nutshell

Using Kahoot to improve student engagement: A trial targeting personal tutoring & professional development

A pilot of Kahoot software in School-wide initiatives including Personal Tutoring, the Professional Development module and several smaller scale modules. Could Kahoot have a positive impact on student engagement and should it be considered for wider use across the School?

Project Team: David Anderson, Pippa Denny-Gelder, Stephanie Schiaffonati, Alison Raby and Catriona Hyde.

If you are interested in using Kahoot! or want to find out more details about our project please contact David Anderson at danderson@lincoln.ac.uk.

What is the DICE Cafe?

DICE Cafe: Supporting Digital and Interactive Classroom Experiences

The DICE Cafe is an innovation hub for academics to work with students to identify, create and trial Digital and Interactive Classroom Experiences. 

The aim of this initiative is to share practical teaching and learning practices amongst colleagues, and provide support where necessary. Typically sessions focus on how to use existing resources available in the Business School, such as virtual reality, board games, business simulations and lego. As well as supporting academics to put forward bids to pilot new projects, such as Kahoot!, customising games and business simulation competitions. 

In the first two months of it’s existence the DICE Cafe has met weekly with new projects emerging at each event. It has attracted three UG dissertation students who are framing their research around the use of board games and VR in learning. Activities (such as lego and Kahoot) from the DICE Cafe have been brought into classrooms and used in school wide personal tutoring events. 

At the last lecture I ran students used Kahoot to help me adapt a board game which they will use to revise the module in 4 weeks time, this has also inadvertently provided the basis for a bid to PRME for developing an innovative teaching and learning pedagogy.

People have now started to approach me for support to use the new teaching resources and I’m working with a several teams to help provide this support. If you’re interested in using this kind of approach in your teaching contact David Anderson at danderson@lincoln.ac.uk.

The purpose of this blog is to capture activity associated with the DICE Cafe and to support others on their journey to use more digital and interactive classroom experiences.