Get students to select preferred work with the board

I am currently working on a short teaching-related article for university teachers – and I thought I could park some example screenshots here, regarding my use of Jamboard, which is going to be killed off by Google. However, all is not lost, because not only are there other alternatives available, such as Padlet, and if you have work in person, you can also use physical blackboards and whiteboards.

I did this with students when they were making SDGs related Open Educational Resources available on my learner-related blog. (Aside – I really regret calling it Get Great English, now because it seems really boastful, but I guess it’s what I want my students to actually get).

Anyway, I set up the Jamboard and got them to select their top three choices. I told them I would try to accommodate their first choices if possible but it depended on how many people chose different topics out of the 36 students in the class.

Just an example of the way I used the Jamboard, not the students’ actual Jamboard.

It worked well, and it’s somewhat painless. It took me about 10 minutes to group students, and they were all satisfied with the groupings.

As I mentioned above, this could all be done with a physical board and sticky notes, too.

The next stages are that students manage their projects with elements of Agile management and Scrum meetings, inspired by Rebecca Pope-Ruark’s book Agile Faculty.