• Home
  • Training
    • Training Calendar
    • DevOps Accelerator Program
    • Live Online Training
      • Certified Scrum Master
      • Certified Scrum Product Owner
      • Advanced Certified Scrum Master® Cohort Based
      • Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner(A-CSPO)
      • Training From The Back Of The Room Virtual Edition
      • Agile at Scale Course
    • Self-Paced
      • Free Scrum Foundations Video Training
      • Certified Beyond User Stories Workshop
  • Consulting
  • At A Glance
  • Our Team
  • Blogs
    • Books and Reference
    • Scrum Mastery
    • Our Stories
    • Product Management
    • Virtual Training
    • DevOps
    • Scrum Case Studies
  • 201-374-0893
  • info@conceptsandbeyond.com
Facebook
Twitter
Linkedin
Youtube
  • Home
  • Training
    • Training Calendar
    • DevOps Accelerator Program
    • Live Online Training
      • Certified Scrum Master
      • Certified Scrum Product Owner
      • Advanced Certified Scrum Master® Cohort Based
      • Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner(A-CSPO)
      • Training From The Back Of The Room Virtual Edition
      • Agile at Scale Course
    • Self-Paced
      • Free Scrum Foundations Video Training
      • Certified Beyond User Stories Workshop
  • Consulting
  • At A Glance
  • Our Team
  • Blogs
    • Books and Reference
    • Scrum Mastery
    • Our Stories
    • Product Management
    • Virtual Training
    • DevOps
    • Scrum Case Studies

  • Home
  • Training
    • Training Calendar
    • DevOps Accelerator Program
    • Live Online Training
      • Certified Scrum Master
      • Certified Scrum Product Owner
      • Advanced Certified Scrum Master® Cohort Based
      • Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner(A-CSPO)
      • Training From The Back Of The Room Virtual Edition
      • Agile at Scale Course
    • Self-Paced
      • Free Scrum Foundations Video Training
      • Certified Beyond User Stories Workshop
  • Consulting
  • At A Glance
  • Our Team
  • Blogs
    • Books and Reference
    • Scrum Mastery
    • Our Stories
    • Product Management
    • Virtual Training
    • DevOps
    • Scrum Case Studies

Blog Archives

Virtual Training
Polling in the Classroom

Teachers, ranging from trainers in corporate classrooms to professors at Harvard University, are finding value in interacting with students through polling. 

Modern instruction no longer involves one-way communication in the classroom.  No longer do we expect students to sit through hours of lecture, just staring at slides while the speaker drones on and on.  Instead, there are many approaches to transform the classroom into an interactive and engaging forum with two-way communication and more robust learning.   I took a bit of time recently to focus on one tool for interacting during lessons which I find very versatile and valuable, “Polling.”

What is polling?

Polling is simply the following:

During a lecture or training session, the instructor takes a vote or “poll” by  asking students to select one or more fixed responses to a question.  The steps involved in polling are simple:

  1. Plan and prepare your poll before the session begins.
  2. At the appropriate time in the session, introduce the poll to the students.
  3. Ask the students to indicate their response with the options available.
  4. Give the students a reasonable window of time to review the options and respond.
  5. After the students had a chance to respond, reveal how the group polled.
  6. Hold a brief discussion with the students about what the result means, and allow participants to share their thoughts and observations.

This above description is the core of the activity of polling.  The  tool used to conduct this polling exercise may vary quite a bit.

What tools do I need in order to conduct polling?

For virtual sessions, polling may be executed on a wide variety of platforms and tools including an online whiteboard with icons or the Dot Voting functionality that they sometimes have built in, or even via websites and apps built for surveys and polling.  The options are rapidly expanding as the world strives to find additional ways to connect virtually.  You may even choose to conduct polling using  video conferencing tools which now  often have a Polling function built-in, of by having learners type responses via the chat function.

Some of my favorite and most frequently used tools for polling in a virtual setting are Zoom, Interactive Whiteboards like Miro, and Mentimeter.

  • In Zoom, you can enable a polling feature and have users select one or more answers. I especially like the feature in Zoom that allows you to save polls to your library and reuse them in the future!  Or, if you want to keep it simple in Zoom, use the chat box or fist-of-five voting with cameras on.  There are several options.
  • Miro is another option I use frequently. I like the voting option in tools like Miro because the students can stay within a board we are already working on and vote to respond to your poll there.
  • Mentimeter is another interesting alternative, which gives students the ability to respond on a computer or smart phone so access is flexible. It has a variety of templates so you can have a bit more variation in your polling with Mentimeter, which can keep you and students engaged.

For in-person instruction, polling may occur using various audience response technologies including clickers or voting with smart phones.  Additionally, if you want to use a basic option that works with either setting, you can simply create a poll where you ask a question and get attendees  to show a number response on their hands.

All of these methods work, but what is more important than the tool used is that you keep the students engaged, involved and use polling to open the door to two-way communication.

Polling in my experience is a valuable tool.

Polling has become an approach often used in my training sessions. For example, in a recent session, I decided to use polling to check for understanding.  Before the class, I prepared a poll on Mentimeter.com.  After several minutes of lecture on the new material I paused to introduce the poll to the class.  Via their computer (or cell phone) they were able to access Mentí.com, enter the code for my poll, and provide their answer to the poll questions.  I could see when the number of responses matched the number of students in my class, and shared the results with everyone on the screenshare. I saw most of the students had the same expected answer, but there were a few that were different. This provided me with an opportunity to expand on the area where some students could use clarification, give time for the students to explain their thoughts, and then proceed with all students on the same page, and engaged.

Benefits of Polling:

There are so many benefits to “polling,” a few of which I experienced in this example above.  This list is not exhaustive, but some of the benefits may include:

  • Polling can transform a class from one-way information transmission session to two-way communication and open dialogue
  • Creates active engagement and makes learning more interactive
  • Provides an organized way for collection and categorization of feedback
  • Allows assessment of understanding

As an instructor, if you have not used polling before, I would encourage you to do so.  In addition to these benefits above, if you give polling a try you might be surprised and learn a little something yourself, and you certainly will increase learning for all involved. If you have incorporated some form of polling into your classroom, perhaps it is time to be adventurous and explore a new variety of tools available for this technique, as they seem to be expanding regularly!  In either case, it is an excellent tool that helps teachers teach and it helps learners learn.

References:

“Classroom Participation and Polling.” Harvard University, atg.fas.harvard.edu/classroom-participation-and-polling. Accessed 20 June 2022.

Bowman, Sharon. “TBR-VE Glossary Addendum to the Revised Edition of the TBR-VE Participant Workbook.” TBR-VE Participant Workbook, pdf ed., Glenbrook, NV, Bowperson Publishing and Training, Inc., 2022, pp. 18–19.

—

Concepts and Beyond teaches many more virtual techniques in Training from the BACK of the Room Virtual Edition TBR-VE training and our other virtual workshops. Click on the link to know more https://conceptsandbeyond.com/training-calendar/

Scrum, Product Management, and DevOps: Simplifying the jargon

The internet and social media are full of Agile, Scrum, Product Management, and DevOps jargon, including incorrect and misunderstood concepts. This could be problematic for a learner seeking knowledge. Without a course with Scrum Alliance, Scrum.org, or DevOps Institute, this knowledge is difficult to achieve.

The Concepts & Beyond blog is a free suite of articles and videos packaged in tiny chunks. You will learn or refine your knowledge and skills to help your team and organization be effective. When you want to take your knowledge further, we invite you to join us for our  Certified ScrumMaster(CSM),  Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified DevOps Engineering Foundations (DOEF) and Training from the Back of The Room courses across the USA and Canada.

by Tricia Munsey

three before me virtual training technique
Virtual Training
Three Before Me

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.” – Chinese proverb

As an instructor, it is tempting to simply provide an answer as students ask questions. Although it may seem as if we are helping them, as the Chinese proverb above reminds us, in the end we will be helping them more if we involve them in the pursuit of the answer. There are many approaches to this which we share in Training From the BACK of The Room, and one of my favorites is as simple to follow as its name, “Three Before Me.”

How do we use “Three Before Me”?

This training approach to responding to a student’s inquiry is  simple!  Just take the following steps:

  • When a student asks a question, do not simply respond with the answer. Instead, reassure the class you have an answer, but you would love to hear from their peers first. What do these other attendees know about this topic that they can share will their fellow student?
  • Let the students respond.  Be sure to praise answers that are valid and add clarifying or correcting information to ones which are not spot-on.
  • Before you provide an answer, allow up to three students to share their thoughts and answers.
  • Then provide your answer. (IF someone already shared the same answer you have, openly praise them and add to it if appropriate.)
  • Make sure to circle back to the original student that asked the question to make sure their question was answered.
  • Appreciate all the fellow students who spoke up in this Three Before Me exercise with a genuine “Thank you.”

When to Use “Three Before Me”

This is a versatile tool, that can be used in a variety of scenarios.  If a student raises a question, you can try it out!  It has become an approach often used in my classes.  It may be appropriate to pull this technique from your training tool box at any point in a class, but it is especially helpful if you are working with students learning new concepts and practicing new concepts.

Example of “Three Before Me”

For example, recently I was training developers on Story Splitting.  We had covered several approaches when one student asked how we could split a particular story their team had in their backlog. I saw this as a perfect time for “Three Before Me.”  I said I did have an idea, but I wanted to hear what the other developers in the class thought. Everyone listened while one, then the next, and another responded.  What was interesting was none of the answers were the same. Each had a different splitting technique they said they would use, and some even articulated why they chose a certain one based on what we covered in the training.  I was impressed!

I then confirmed each of the responses were quite good and could work for the story in question.  I shared the one I would have gravitated towards, along with my logic, too. The developer that asked the question affirmed he understood and that was helpful.  Before we moved on, I made sure to say “Thank you” to the developers for sharing their insights.  It was great to see the developers were not only acquiring this new knowledge, but they were already comprehending the application of the material as well. Nice!

Benefits of “Three Before Me”

There are so many benefits to “Three Before Me.”  The students learn more as they answer others using the information they are learning.  The person asking the question receives more perspectives and usually more information than an answer from one person alone.  As an instructor, you can gain insight into where the students are in their mastery of the material.  With all this in mind, the next time a student asks a question, I would encourage you to consider if this might be the right time to see what the other students might have to share. You might be surprised and learn a little something yourself, and you certainly will increase learning for all involved.

Try “Three Before Me”, and remember: students often learn more in the pursuit of answers and by discussing content with each other, than they may learn by being provided with an instructor’s answer alone.  Your role as a training certainly has a place, and sometimes that place is training from the BACK of the room.

Did you try this technique? Please share your experiences and thoughts below!  

Concepts and Beyond teaches many more virtual techniques in Training from the BACK of the Room Virtual Edition TBR-VE training and our other virtual workshops. Click on the link to know more https://conceptsandbeyond.com/training-calendar/ https://conceptsandbeyond.com/training-calendar/

 

Scrum, Product Management, and DevOps: Simplifying the jargon

The internet and social media are full of Agile, Scrum, Product Management, and DevOps jargon, including incorrect and misunderstood concepts. This could be problematic for a learner seeking knowledge. Without a course with Scrum Alliance, Scrum.org, or DevOps Institute, this knowledge is difficult to achieve.

The Concepts & Beyond blog is a free suite of articles and videos packaged in tiny chunks. You will learn or refine your knowledge and skills to help your team and organization be effective. When you want to take your knowledge further, we invite you to join us for our  Certified ScrumMaster(CSM),  Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified DevOps Engineering Foundations (DOEF) and Training from the Back of The Room courses across the USA and Canada.

by Tricia Munsey



Our Training

Certified Scrum Master
Training From The Back Of The Room
Certified Scrum Product Owner
Design It Yourself (DIY) Training & Facilitation

Consulting

Product Strategy
Technology
Transformation
NimblebyDesign™ Framework

Information

About us
Blogs
Our Team
Contact Us
Testimonials

Connect With Us

  201-374-0893
  info@conceptsandbeyond.com
Facebook
Twitter
Linkedin
Youtube
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
Cookie SettingsAccept All
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytics
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
Others
Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.
SAVE & ACCEPT
  • ←
  • Enquire Now

    Enquire Now