Diaposi magazine · 22 articles
Research that holds up, practical ideas for your next session and honest guides to the tools shaping participation.
Theory
You ask "any questions?", nobody moves, and you take the silence as understanding. The research is unambiguous that you shouldn't: over half of students in large science courses report never asking or answering a question across an entire semester, and the reason is almost never that they had none.
9 Aug 2026 • 11 min read
What the research actually found about attention, participation and active learning — including the places the popular version of it is wrong.
Theory · 11 min read
Theory · 11 min read
Theory · 9 min read
Theory · 9 min read
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Theory · 9 min read
Named techniques, scripts and numbers you can use in your next lecture without rebuilding the course around them.
In practice · 11 min read
In practice · 9 min read
In practice · 9 min read
In practice · 9 min read
In practice · 9 min read
In practice · 9 min read
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In practice · 11 min read
Tools · 11 min read
Every tool in this category does live polling. They differ on four things that actually decide whether one works for a lecture: what the free tier caps, whether students need accounts, whether answers are anonymous, and what you get after the session. This guide compares them on those.
Tools · 11 min read
Most people looking for a Mentimeter alternative are hitting one specific wall: the free tier allows 50 participants per month, which is one seminar, not one lecture. This compares the realistic options on the constraints that actually decide it.
Tools · 10 min read
Slido is a very good tool that was not built for you. It was built for company all-hands, conferences and Webex meetings, and it prices accordingly: by the size of the audience. A lecture hall is an audience that is large every single week, which is the one shape that pricing model handles worst.
Tools · 11 min read
Kahoot is very good at the thing it was built for, and that thing is not diagnosing a lecture. If you are looking for an alternative, it is usually because the competitive format is doing something you do not want in a 200-seat hall, and that instinct is supported by the research.
