Introducing Mentimeter (Quick Guide)

Mentimeter (‘Menti’) is an online presentation tool which allows the presenter to create interactive
activities for their audience to engage with. In addition to the numerous group engagement activity types available,
Menti is great because users can access the ‘results’ of their interactions via a number of different channels, including
embedding their activities directly within existing content (e.g. i2 content items). As a general rule, the activities stay
‘live’ until closed, which means they can potentially remain active within learning objects indefinitely.

Context
• Mentimeter is intended primarily as presentation / group engagement software. The creators are thinking
in terms of live audiences engaging with their presentations - before, during and after.
• The building terms associated with this platform - presentation, slides and activities.

Process: Setting up an Account

CSU staff have access to an enterprise license for Mentimeter, meaning you are able to log in with your university
login credentials, create unlimited activities and use the full suite of mentimeter activities, templates and
integrations with other software (e.g. Powerpoint, Zoom).

To create your mentimeter account using this Single Sign On (SSO) process:
● Start by jumping onto the Mentimeter website at https://mentimeter.com
● Click ‘Sign Up’, then ‘Sign up with SSO’ (bottom of the screen)
● Type in ‘charles sturt university’ when prompted for the organisation name, then click ‘Authenticate’.

That’s it! Your mentimeter account will now open, allowing you to create audience engagement activities to your
heart’s content. Each time you access mentimeter after signing up, make sure you look for an ‘SSO’ option when
logging in.

Process: Creating a New Presentation

• Click on ‘New Presentation’ and give it a title (if you’re using folders to organise content, go into the
destination folder first)
• Select question Type (activity or content) – for a full breakdown
of the various activities, refer to the end of this document.
• Configure your activity title (including a longer description,
images etc. if required)
• Select the ‘Customize’ tab – this will allow further adjustment of
how the live activity behaves

Note. Every activity type will have different configurations, including how the activity is displayed, the language
used etc.

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Your Activity is Live

At this point your presentation is actually live already

(autosave is on by default), you could click ‘Present’ (top
right) and launch the slide (activity) in a new browser window OR click on Mentimeter ‘Home’ (top left) to return
to your full list of presentations. Next to the main blue ‘Present’ button, you will also be able to see the ‘Share’
button, which will provide all the necessary information for making your Menti available to your audience.

Making your activity available to others

Aside from presenting directly from the ‘builder’ window, Mentimeter also has a presenter
menu for you to access details associated with your (presentation) activity – these options are
accessed from your full presentations listing, by clicking on the 3 dots (more / options) to the
far right of the presentation title. These options include not only being able to launch the
presentation, but importantly - having access to the Share setting details that you will need to
provide to participants.

The Share Panel

The Share panel is in 3 sections - the default section ‘Participation’, provides you with the means by which
participants can engage with the activity (i.e. the voting portal). Most commonly this will be via either a ‘voting
link’ OR by providing a temporary voting code for the audience (which can also be visible at the top of your
activities).

Note. The voting link remains permanent and ‘live’ until you either delete the activity or turn off the ability for
participants to vote (this option is available in the activity ‘customize’ tab). If using the voting code however, these
are only valid for 2 days, before a new code is automatically created by Mentimeter.

The third section ‘Presentation Sharing’ provides you with both a direct link to the output / results page of your
activity (which updates in real time as participants vote), as well as the embed code for the results page, which
allows you then to embed your mentimeter activity into other websites (e.g. i2 site content areas).

Share panel areas: ‘Participation’ tab and ‘Presentation sharing tabs’

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Invite Collaborators - the third space

Our institutional account for Mentimeter also gives staff access

to a powerful third sharing option for their activities - the
‘Invite Collaborators’ tab. This means you can share access
(and editing rights) with other menti users at CSU. Once you
invite another user this way (by providing their work email
address),
your presentation will then be available in their list of
presentations in mentimeter also.

Note. you will only be able to add other staff who have also created their Mentimeter SSO account previously.

Additional Notes on Mentimeter

• Activity creators are able to configure the ‘pace’ of their live presentation (assuming you have multiple
presentation slides / activities to work through). This type of customisation, along with a range of other
presenter choices, are accessed by clicking on the ‘Settings’ option when you are in your activity builder
window. Choosing either ‘presenter pace’ (you’re not moving on to subsequent slides until the presenter
clicks next) OR ‘audience pace’ (they finish one slide, then move on when they’re ready).

• Software is particularly mobile-friendly (incl. an app) and mentis will open in any current browser

• Instructions ‘bar’ (including a central ‘voting’ page with a code to use) can be turned off / made invisible
on the activity slides → assuming you’re embedding the activity and providing a separate link to the
response page, you won’t want this clogging up the activity content area itself.

Some Additional Activity Choice Considerations

• Sequence - position of the activity in relation to your existing content (at the start of the learning material,
during, after) is important in relation to the effective ‘flow’ of the content / narrative.
• Audience - who are the results for? If the participant is intended to get something out of completing the
activity and seeing those live results (e.g. Word cloud) - this lends toward particular types of task. If the
instructor is using the activity to get information from participants (e.g. to inform subsequent delivery)
then this will inform the task used AND the perceived effectiveness of said task to the students.
• Sustainability - If you’re intending to use these objects within learning content, assume that no one in the
short term is going to be responsible for ‘cleaning out’ your activities. They need to keep working & having
value to student after student, session after session. When determining your wording and activity type,
this will definitely have an impact on the end product. Decontextualise! Don’t refer to specific dates,
assessment item #s or tasks, individual teaching staff, topic #s etc.

Mentimeter Question (activity) Types

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 1. Multiple Choice

Audience is prompted to make a choice between options, the results are updated live and represented via Bar,
Donut, Pie or Dot (cluster) graph format.

• An image can be used in the question, along with text

• The question can be either 150 characters long OR a longer question
description (250 chars) can also be used.
• A correct answer can be identified and displayed
• Results (responses) can be displayed as %
• Multiple responses can be uses (multi choice vs multi answer)

Example - below you can see the voting window (left) for a new multi choice activity, along with the embedded
results page in an i2 content item. No responses yet, if an image has been used, it covers the options until you hide
it, potentially allowing for a ‘reveal’ scenario to be used. Underneath you can see the live updated results, number
of respondents etc.

2. Image Choice

Think multiple choice, but with images associated with each option. Only bar graph representation of results
possible. Multiple selections possible - vote once.

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 3. Word Cloud
Classic word cloud, multiple entries possible for each voter, multiple submissions (visits) allowed. Each entry for a
particular word in the cloud will increase its prominence. Interestingly, a multilingual profanity filter is built into
this activity type.

4. Scales

From the outset, this activity type is likely intended for simple Likert scale-type tasks, where the participants plot
their input against the statements between the dimensions of ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’. However - it
is the customisation of this content type which makes it potentially special:

• You can rename those dimensions (e.g. positive vs negative).

• You can have up to 8 separate scales ‘statements’ in the one activity.

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 • You can configure the min-max values to choose from (e.g. you might want people to identify just one of 3
positions along a scale.. or up to 10.
• You also have the option to present the results as a spider chart.. play around with this visualisation.. It
lends itself more toward showing clusters of respondents considering all their answers.
• You can show total averages for responses, if desired.
• You can turn off the ‘skip’ option - they’ll have to put in a response for each to open the next scale..
Sequential questions?

NOTE. There is scope for this type of tool to be used in a self-assessment capacity (e.g. asking participants to rate their
confidence in particular areas of knowledge). Combine this with a before & after shot.. It may provide some insight for the
academic into how informative / engaging etc. their content is according to the anonymous respondents, making modifications
to delivery as required. “Generally, I can see that students are all over concept 1, but there’s a real issue with concept 2.. So I’m
going to run a workshop dedicated to that / make an additional resource to assist with that.. etc etc..

5. Open Ended
An open-ended question / statement is provided to the participant to respond to. Results are displayed via either
speech bubbles, one-by-one (click through) or as a flowing grid (i.e. it actually moves around by itself). Contains a
profanity filter and allows for multiple submissions.

6. 100 points

Title pretty much says it all - you’ve got 100 points (always displayed as %). How are you going to divide them up
between the options provided? - max 30 items.

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 7. Ranking
Arrange the choices provided. They will always display vertically as 1st → 10th etc. (descending). The devil is in the
detail for this one - the wording of the question (see ‘instruction’) and the item labels.

8. 2 by 2 Matrix

This one is going to need some playing with. Basically, you’re creating an X + Y axis grid for participants to rate
individual items somewhere along the 2 continuums (20 items max). E.g. ‘Effort’ vs ‘Impact’ are often used.
Various grid layouts possible.

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 9. Who will Win?

Straight out voting tool, with a potential reveal (‘show the winner’). One vote only.

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