Pixel International Conferences

This paper aims to show ways in which the use of Mentimeter in an LSP Italian class can aid the creative learning of vocabulary and can facilitate the provision of regular peer feedback. In the presentation I draw from my experience of teaching Italian to a small class of complete beginners who study Product Design at the Glasgow School of Art; in the semester which follows this short LSP course, the students attend their year abroad at Milan’s Politecnico. My decision to start using Mentimeter regularly in this five-week intensive module sprang from a dissatisfaction with a book- and paper-based approach, which seemed to keep students very passive and felt limited and repetitive. With this course’s intended learning outcomes being both ‘general’ (with topics such as, for instance, finding accommodation or being interviewed for a part-time job) and ‘specific’ (with content related to the students’ field of Product Design), the employment of Mentimeter maintains student engagement high and fosters ‘the co-construction of knowledge’ (Moorhouse and Kohnke, 2020). As my practical examples will show, Mentimeter enables students to: 1) consolidate vocabulary knowledge through variation; 2) easily take part in formative and ‘friendly’ assessment; 3) reflect daily on their own and their classmates’ learning.