UCL Moodle Guides
Navigation
General links
Moodle Home
Quickscan Dyslexia Screening Tool
Keywords: question, response, anonymous, voting, hot, flipping, polling, classrooms, upvote
Hot Question is used to create a list of popular questions or topics from a group. You ask participants to submit questions or responses to your question, which may be in relation to a recorded lecture, a topical issue, a reading, or ideas for what to cover in a revision class. Participants can then submit questions related to that topic, which appear in an ordered list (the newest questions appear first). Participants may then 'rate' others' questions by clicking a Thumbs Up icon - this gives the item heat. The more votes, the hotter the question and the higher up the list it will appear.
This activity allows students to actively engage in class wide discussions, with the benefit of being able to ask questions/make comments anonymously. It is especially useful for large cohorts since it allows a group to decide collectively which topics are most important. It can help you identify any problem areas that your students are struggling to understand and you can plan your subsequent classes to address these. It is ideal for getting feedback from students on what to cover in revision classes.
You can also use the answers to generate a Word cloud, so you can easily see the most popular ideas (they will be in larger text). See below for an example.
Ensure your students understand how they should use the activity. if you choose to allow them to post anonymously, make this explicit.
There are not many configuration options for Hot Question, but one is anonymous posting for participants. When enabled they can choose to hide their identity from other participants. You may find this useful if you are asking students for feedback on complex or difficult to understand subjects or are trying to encourage students who may be worried about posting a question they might not feel comfortable asking directly using their names.
Further help
Further guidance on Hot Question is available from Moodle Docs.
If you find any inaccurate or missing information you can even update this yourself (it's a communal wiki).
If you have a specific question about the tool please contact the Digital Education team
Whilst students can post anonymously, their activity will still appear in the Moodle logs.
This is what a hot question looks like. This example is asking students to post any questions they have about a video they have watched. You could also display the video within the hot question, alongside the instructions.
A. A word cloud shows popular words in larger text than less popular words. There are many free online Word cloud generators available, such as: http://www.wordle.net
Here's an example of a Word Cloud:
(Image source: http://aptgadget.com/word-cloud-makers/)