Social leverage enhances in-class participation

In Xorro, we're fond of arguing that the only anxiety a participant should ever feel is if not participating when they are supposed to be.

We know that participation is central to learning in group settings.  And yet, it can be a tough challenge for lecturers, speakers and trainers to achieve high levels of participation in live settings.  That's Xorro's "call to action":  We make it easy, fun and completely risk-free to answer a question.  Using this, Facilitators can easily motivate their audience to get involved.

One of the tools available in Xorro-Q's arsenal has been a feature of Q-Launcher from the very start: In Q-Launcher, the Facilitator can choose to display the answering status of participants while the question is in progress.  By default, Q-Launcher's Participant panel opens to disclose just "inactive" participants (those yet to answer the question).  This list grows rapidly shorter as people answer - and the names left become progressively larger....!

It's impressive to see how effective this can be in encouraging responses from every single person in the group.

Unfortunately, those facilitators preferring to launch their activities from the QF site (instead of using Q-Launcher) have been disadvantaged, as QF has displayed just the answering status off all participants (see first image, below left).  For a large class, the tiles are so small that it is impossible to identify non-respondents at a glance.

Until now.

From this week, Facilitators can switch the Participants panel from the "all participants" view (below left), to a new "Not answered" participants view (below right).  This has the effect (as with the Q-Launcher) of enlarging non-respondents' tiles proportionately.

To toggle between one view and the other, just click on the "Participants" button in the "All Participants" view, or on the "Not Answered" button in the new shorted view.