Located in the heart of Knoxville, the University of Tennessee (or UT) is Tennessee’s flagship university and premier public research institution, serving more than 35,000 students. As in many higher education institutions, educational technology has become increasingly important at UT to both support faculty and elevate learning for students. New technology can unlock exciting opportunities; though, it can also include a steep learning curve and time to adapt. How did UT strike a balance? To supercharge learning and engagement, Kahoot! EDU was a clear choice.

Connecting with the Kahoot! generation on campus

Rachael Stanley, a Learning Technology Specialist at UT, noted Kahoot! as an EdTech solution that’s become a familiar staple in the learning experience for both educators and students.  

This has allowed faculty at UT to quickly implement Kahoot! in their classrooms when the university began offering premium licenses. So far, UT has set up over 200 faculty licenses through Kahoot! EDU. Now, Rachael facilitates workshops to show faculty members all they can do with Kahoot! EDU’s advanced features, and how they can best use Kahoot! in the classroom and beyond to power engaging learning.

More than a quiz: unlocking new ways to learn with Kahoot!

According to Rachael, professors at UT are already using Kahoot! in a variety of contexts: “Faculty who use Kahoot! typically use it to encourage participation, take gut-checks to see where people are and what we need to study better, review for tests, and to just shake things up a bit in class.”

Megan Fields, a lecturer at UT’s College of Communication and Information, also sees a variety of uses of Kahoot! among her coworkers, including her team of public speaking educators. She shared how one fellow faculty member “very effectively” uses Kahoot! throughout class, interspersing lecture and interactive kahoot questions. In addition, she noted how another professor will use kahoots as knowledge checks for assigned reading, giving her valuable insights:

For her own courses, Megan kicks off her semesters with Kahoot! as a class icebreaker. With 200 students in class, she uses Kahoot! to engage them as a group and foster connections between them and with her. For example, she invites students to share their backgrounds with the Drop-Pin question type. “I give them a map where they can pin where they’re from. It’ll show the United States, and you’ll see a ton of pins in the northeast and a ton of pins in the Tennessee area, and then a bunch that are even outside the map, because they’re foreign students. We have conversations after this, because I invite students to call out their pin and tell us where they’re from.” Later in the kahoot, students can give their first impressions of class in a word cloud, giving students a voice and helping them get to know each other even better.

Switching it up to enhance engagement and understanding 

Casey Norris, a professor of Nursing at UT, has also been taking advantage of Kahoot!’s flexible format and variety of question types to create more comprehensive learning experiences:

“I teach Pathophysiology in Nursing, which is probably one of the hardest nursing classes, so my co-teacher at the time and I were trying to figure out ways to add questions to class. I really don’t like clickers, so we were looking for another option. That’s when Kahoot! started adding different types of questions, and a lot of them helped me with our Next Gen NCLEX,” (a nationwide licensure exam for nursing in the United States, Canada, and Australia). “So when I moved here to UT, I just totally built my class through Kahoot!.”

For Casey, the key to energize and engage students throughout the class has been switching it up with different question formats, video content, and using kahoot questions as a springboard for discussion. By utilizing a variety of content and question types, Casey not only keeps the experience fresh and interesting, but also provides students with more ways to take in information and build understanding.

Powering up collaborative teaching 

The College of Nursing is one of UT’s top users of Kahoot! EDU’s shared teacher workspaces, along with the World Languages and Cultures department and the Haslam College of Business. With Kahoot! EDU, faculty members are able to share Kahoot! learning content and resources through collaborative class folders. This has helped educators save valuable time on content creation. It has also enabled professors to hit the ground running when teaching a new course, with access to ready-made learning content that’s both relevant and engaging. Megan agreed that she would like to see her own department start exchanging kahoots through shared teacher workspaces, to make it quick and easy for professors to add interactivity to their lectures. 

As interactive learning through technology becomes a more established part of the educational experience, choosing flexible tools that support both educators and students is key. At UT, faculty continue to work with the Kahoot! team to discover new ways of elevating teaching and learning with Kahoot!.

Do you have a Kahoot! success story to share? We want to hear it! Please reach out to press@kahoot.com or contact us on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok,  or X. 

Learn how you can bring Kahoot!’s all-in-one toolkit to your campus with Kahoot! EDU.

Disclaimer: The experiences and perspectives shared in this article reflect those of the faculty interviewed and are not intended to represent the institution’s views as a whole.