Padlet: A tool to engage students in a remote learning era

Develop your bulletin board to meet your class objectives

I began using Padlet to have an alternative method for student engagement outside of chats and discussion. When working in a Zoom environment, it is difficult to manage PowerPoint slides, lectures, chat room monitoring and engaging students. I found Padlet to be a great alternative for classroom discussion. I was able to pick some key topics that I wanted to discuss as a class each week. Since the topics or questions were posted I didn’t have to flip back and forth between PowerPoint slides. The beauty of Padlet is the interaction that happens. After a short discussion, I would ask students to answer one of the discussion questions. As students entered their answers, I was able to see them populate Padlet in real-time. This gave me the opportunity to discuss the answers and solicit more information if needed.

Set-up is a breeze

Starting your Padlet journey is easy, the website is intuitive and fun. The welcome page always has a cute saying to pump up your creative juices. You can include instructions, headings, or categories to your boards. There are various backgrounds for you to pick from. Padlet is accessible through a shared link or QR code. This provides easy access for the students on various devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop). In my course, I copied both the link and the QR code and embedded it in our learning management system. You can let students participate anonymously or they can type their name in the title of each comment. Students can reinforce a theme or concept by using hearts or emoji.

Benefits

One of the greatest benefits I have found is that students don’t have to talk over each other to participate. Especially, during Zoom classes the added complexities of technology (muting, unmuting, lag in internet) can lead to class disruption and confusion. Padlet allows everyone to participate and you as the faculty member to lead the verbal discussion. Engagement then is limited to a handful of people who are comfortable talking to a group of people. Students who are shy or speak English as a second language may find this method less intimidating.

Every technology has limitations, but I have found Padlet to have very few. As faculty discover new ways to engage students, the website may find an increase in traffic causing lag time. I found this to be true when I used this in a class with 90 students. In hindsight, it may have been better to divide these students into groups and have individual groups post their responses.

It’s a great tool for student engagement and conducting discussions. The next time you need to teach an online class and want to interact more with your students consider trying Padlet.