Using Vevox for Q&A

You may be familiar with Vevox as an in-class polling tool, but you may be less familiar with its utility for conducting Q&A in both online and face-to-face sessions.

Benefits of using Vevox Q&A

• Allows for and encourages interactive engagement between session / class host and student participants.
• Perfect for creating topical ‘sub conversations’ which in-turn helps to reinforce collective learning.
• Unlike the chat panel in Collaborate or Teams, the Vevox Q&A panel is anonymous. This puts everybody on a ‘level playing field’ and empowers even the quietest person in the room to have a voice and ask questions.
•  Great resource for consolidating questions and interactivity coming in from multiple audiences  (online / remote & physical audience).
• Moderated Q&A allows the host presenter / lecturer to easily control the flow of questions and decide what questions to publish.
• Q&A can be left open indefinitely to allow participants to post into the Q&A board, even if the session is not being presented live.
• Can also be a highly effective tool when conducting a group work exercise.

How to get started

First, check that the Q&A panel is visible on your Vevox home screen. If you do not see this, go to the settings and you will see an option to switch the Q&A panel on. Then, using the Q&A panel is like any other Vevox session, generating a code for students to enter on their personal devices in order to participate.

Moderation

• Moderation is a powerful tool to use when appropriate and sometimes may be necessary depending on the situation.
• Moderation provides your Q&A with an extra layer of ‘Quality Control’ as submitted questions must first be reviewed & published before appearing on the Q&A board.
• It gives much more control to the host and works particularly well in a ‘co-hosted’ environment.
• Moderation can be toggled on/off at any time during a session (see below).
• All moderated questions still appear in the data report
• If using Moderation, you also have the ability to share a ‘Moderation Link’ with external users (does not require a Vevox License).
• Important Note: Even if Moderation is not switched on, Questions can still be actively hidden on demand.

As we all know, the majority of teaching is carried out by one person without a moderator to keep on top of the questions being asked. One way around this is to structure your teaching into sections, moderating and dealing with questions after each section.

Case Study

Below, Dr Christina Stanley at the University of Chester explains why she favours using the Vevox Q&A panel over the chat panels in the VLE or in Teams.

“I found that when asking questions in live Teams sessions, students just weren’t responding, either vocally or by using the chat, so I tried using Vevox (the Q&A board) instead. Suddenly, responses flooded in; from having no responses at all in the chat, I instantly had about half the class responding using Vevox. Student feedback indicates that many prefer to ask/answer questions using Vevox due to the anonymity it allows them. This is especially important for those students who suffer from anxiety, or just lack confidence. Vevox is therefore a powerful tool for ensuring our online teaching is both engaging and inclusive.”

Dr Christina Stanley
Senior Lecturer
Dept of Biological Sciences
University of Chester

If you have any queries about using Vevox, including the Q&A panel, please contact us at tel@worc.ac.uk