Pear Deck: Interactive and Engaging Learning

​Kim Greer has an Ed.D. with an emphasis in E-Learning from National University. Her dissertation focused on inclusive teaching practices, ethnicity, and sense of belonging in online STEM courses. She also has an M.S. in Physiology and Developmental Biology. She has been a biology faculty member at Chandler-Gilbert Community College since 2019 and primarily teaches anatomy and physiology. Kim serves on SLOAC and OLAC and is currently in courses to become an Instructional Design Fellow at CGCC.

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What is Pear Deck? 
Pear Deck is a formative assessment and interactive tool that is an add-on to Google Slides. There is a free version and a paid version. I have found that the free version works well for my needs. Pear Deck allows you to add pizzazz with various question types to your slides. Students then answer the questions anonymously, on their own devices, and then responses are collected and can be displayed to the class in real time. Pear Deck can be used across all course modalities and offers either instructor or student-paced options.

Pear Deck supports a variety of interactive and engaging instructional strategies, such as:

• Formative Assessment
• Active Learning
• Retrieval Practice
• Feedback Driven Metacognition
• Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving

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Question Types:

• Multiple Choice - Poll the class instantly
• Numerical Response - Results are displayed on a number line
• Open-Ended - Students can type in their own response
• Draggable and Drawable - Students label and draw

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What do I actually use it for in my course?
The question type that I use the most is draggable and I primarily use this for anatomy identification. I will have an image and ask students to drag their dot, flag, star, etc. to a specific organ or structure. Once everyone has responded on their own device I will display the results which show all student responses at the same time anonymously. This allows me to see how many "got it", clear up points of confusion, and allow students to see if they "got it" or that they were (likely) not the only person who still needed help and practice. 

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​What can you use it for in your course?

• Draw out a mind map
• Summarize the topic for the day
• Share the muddiest point
• Rank or order items
• Label a diagram

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Additional Pear Deck Resources

• The learning science behind Pear Deck
• 20 ways to use Pear Deck to engage students
• The Five Interactive Question Types Using Pear Deck