interact with all your students

Communicubes

simple, cheap, effective, fun

Answers to questions about teaching large and small groups

 How can I get all my students to engage in a large group?
How can I get all of them to answer?
How can I do this without expensive electronic voting devices, detectors, software and displays?

Answer: Give them all a CommuniCube!
Students rotate their cube to show a different colour for every answer they could give (1 of 5 options).

 How do I know the result of voting?
Count the coloured squares you see, or estimate percentages with larger numbers. It's quicker than you think.

Won't they be too small to see or too bulky to handle?
These purpose-designed, 10cm cubes are small enough to handle but large and bright enough to be visible to the teacher even in large groups and lecture theatres.

 Won't students show the wrong colour?
The students don't need to know the colours, the cubes have a number map - they just rotate the cube so they can read the number they are choosing!

Won't it waste time teaching students how to use them?
It takes 1 minute to train students.

What about colour blind or blind students?
Students don't use the colours. Cubes with Braille or touch bumps are available for blind students.

How do the students know how everyone voted?
Feed back their response to them, either:

1. tell them or, if a detailed numerical feedback is needed,
2. use an Excel sheet with ready-made pie charts (free with communicubes).

So, why use CommuniCubes?

Student learning requires intellectual activity, they need to pay attention, and they need feedback on their performance.

With individuals or very small groups, a teacher can engage attention by requiring responses from everyone.

In larger groups (tutorials, seminars, lectures), few students volunteer. To interact with everyone in a large group needs some technology.

Electronic personal response systems (PRS) provide interactivity but

they are expensive
they need technical support
they need training for the teacher
a teacher is dependent on the technology, including a power supply.

CommuniCubes also support this interactivity and are

* simple, cheap, and effective
* safe
* independent of a power
   supply or a computer
* reliable, won't let you down
* used in universities,
   colleges and schools
* fun - students say so!

CommuniCubes are available by post as robust, fold-up cards, producing a 10cm cubes.

Links and files:

A picture of a cube (170K .jpg)

A small screen video of how to fold one (800K .wmv) and the YouTube video

A full screen video of how to fold one (30M .wmv)

Bostock S.J., Hulme J.A. and Davys M. A. 2006 COMMUNICUBES: Intermediate technology for interaction with student groups (.pdf file)

Advice on folding a cube (.txt file)

Ideas for student activities in lectures (.pdf)

Some simple techniques for using cubes (.doc)

Tips on using cubes (.doc)

A spreadsheet (.xls) for displaying cube results (not much used).

Contact: Dr. Stephen Bostock , inventor and owner of communicubes stephen@keele.org.uk