How can Wooclap be useful on a snow day?

Hi! 👋 I’m Jennifer, Wooclap’s Community Builder, and today I want to share with you the versatility of Wooclap as an interactive comprehension testing tool both in and out of the classroom, synchronously or asynchronously. In this article, we’ll discuss: 

• Setting-up questionnaires in advance to get a better understanding of your students needs, preferences, and learning outcomes 
• How using Wooclap can make you save time in the long run when you have unforeseen absences in the classroom
• That Wooclap builds camaraderie among students, showing them that they’re on the same playing field

When I was a student at Simmons University in Boston in the early 00s, my classmates and I would wake up on a snowy morning and pray for canceled classes, or a “snow day” as it’s usually called. It was during my freshman year in college that my school got campus-wide internet (albeit wired cable internet, not wifi), but many messages were still communicated by telephone. We’d wake up and pull the phone off the hook to listen: if the dial tone was steady, it meant we didn’t have any campus-wide voicemails waiting for us. If it beeped quickly, it meant we had a message from Roy Schifilliti, then Director of Campus Services, letting us know that classes were canceled for the day. Yahoo! 

Most of us would promptly return to bed, and plan to spend the day lounging around in pajamas, studying, or watching the final season of Friends. 

Leveraging Wooclap for Unplanned Student Absences

But how can Wooclap help instructors manage sudden, unplanned student absences in the midst of a busy semester? I recently talked with Wooclap Super User Amanda Waters, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Central Oklahoma, about how she uses Wooclap. Like many, Amanda discovered Wooclap during the pandemic: “I explored a lot of the different programs out there… (Wooclap) integrates with my PowerPoint seamlessly and I don't have to change screens.” Why has she stuck with Wooclap over the years? “I love the development going on right now, because the new question types are amazing.”

When I asked Amanda how her students react to Wooclap, she said that it makes them realize “ ‘I'm not the only one that doesn't get this’, so it kind of builds class camaraderie.” What’s their favorite feature? “my older students (junior and senior) absolutely love the little Spinning Wheel.”

Leveraging Participant Pace for Snow Days and Student Absences

Amanda tries to construct her courses in such a way that the learning is easily accessible for her students, as long as they put the effort in. I asked her, for example, if she ever uses our Participant Pace feature to ask for student feedback before or after a course. Her response: “I love Participant Pace because sometimes if I have a snow day, or if I have student athletes that are out, I still need to give them the opportunity for participation… I can just throw the questions live into the participant pace, and give them a link, and say ‘this is how you're getting your points this week.’”

While the prospect of having classwork to do even on a snow day must be irritating for today’s 20 year-old college students, it’s reassuring for Amanda who knows that, thanks to Wooclap’s asynchronous questionnaire, she has a way to keep up the pace with her syllabus and will lose less time due to unforeseen absences. This is just another example of how investing time into setting up a Wooclap event for your courses can save you time in the long run!