The Five Interactive Question Types

Overview

This article focuses on how to create custom interactive slides with each of the five Pear Deck Interactive Slide types. Before you begin, create a Pear Deck account and get the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on or PowerPoint Online Add-in. Then, customize your lessons in Google Slides or PowerPoint Online.

Create an Interactive Slide

First, use the editing tools in Google Slides or PowerPoint Online to put a question, prompt, equation, list, image, etc. on your slide. Then, use Pear Deck to determine how students will respond on the Student View. When you present and students join your Session, they see the slide and are able to respond on the Student View according to the interactive response type.

• Response layout guide
• Draggable™
• Drawing
• Text
• Number
• Multiple Choice
• Website. You can embed a website for students to explore on their screens. It's interactive, but it doesn't allow students to insert a response like the types listed above. Click here to learn about Website Slides.

Response layout guide

In this article, you can see how all of the interactive response display on the Projector and Dashboard Views of a Pear Deck Session. To collect and see responses, click the Start Lesson button to start a new Session, then have students join. Click the Show responses button on the Navigation bar. You can change then change the response layout in the top left corner of the screen:

Draggable™ Response

Students respond by dragging objects over the slide in an Instructor or Student-Paced presentation Session. For example, you can have them drag pins over a map.

1. Put your question, instructions, and/or image(s) on the slide. 
2. Open the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on or PowerPoint Online Add-in. In the sidebar, scroll down to the Ask Students a Question section. Click on Draggable™.
3. In the pop up menu, use the drop-down arrows to select the icons you want (up to 5). Click on the color boxes to change the colors and drag the slider to adjust the size. When you're finished, click Update slide.

During your presentation Session

Click Start Lesson to present a Session and have students join. When you reach a Draggable slide and click Show responses, the default display is the Overlaid Layout. But you can also display responses individually by clicking the List or Grid buttons in the top left corner of the screen. Responses are always anonymous on the Projector View. 

• The Overlaid Layout shows all responses at once:
• The Grid Layout shows thumbnails of the responses
• In the Teacher Dashboard, you can also select which type of icon you want to show on the projector. In this example, only the red pins have been selected:

Drawing Response

Students respond by drawing over the slide in an Instructor or Student-Paced presentation Session. For example, they can graph a line.

1. Put your question, instructions, and/or image(s) directly onto your slide. 
2. Open the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on or PowerPoint Online Add-in. In the sidebar, scroll down to the Ask Students a Question section. Click on Draw.

During your presentation Session

Click Start Lesson to present a Session and have students join. When you reach a Drawing slide and click Show responses, you can click on List or Grid in the top left corner to display each student's answer individually, or click on Overlaid to display all of the answers on the same background. 

• The List Layout, as seen in the private Dashboard View, where you can see also students' names
• The Overlaid Layout
• The Grid View

Free Response: Text

Students respond by typing text. For example, you could ask which character from To Kill a Mockingbird this quote belongs to.

1. Put your question, instructions, and/or image(s) directly onto your slide. 
2. Open the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on or PowerPoint Online Add-in. In the sidebar, scroll down to the Ask Students a Question section. Click on the Text option. That's it!

During your presentation Session

Click Start Lesson to present a Session and have students join. When you reach a Text response slide and click Show responses, students can type into a text field on the Student View. Go to the top left corner of the screen and click on the List Layout or Grid Layout.

• List Layout
• Grid Layout

Free Response: Number

Students respond by typing in a number. For example, students can solve an equation and leave a number response.

1. Put your question, example, or equation directly on the slide.
2. Open the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on or the PowerPoint Online Add-in. In the sidebar, scroll down to the Ask Students a Question section. Click on the Number option. Voila!

During your presentation Session

Click Start Lesson to present a Session and have students join. When they reach a Number  response slide, students can type a number into the Student View. When you click Show responses, you can display answers in two ways on the Projector View. One option is the Grid Layout, which shows all of the individual numbers students entered. The second (and default) display is a Box and Whisker Plot. The grey dotted line goes shows the median answer, and a grey box surrounds half of the answers. You see the range and where the majority of answers fall. The thin black lines demarcate high and low answers. If there are extreme outliers, use the magnifier tool to zoom in and leave the outliers, out.

• Grid Layout
• Overlaid Layout (Box and Whisker Plot)

Multiple Choice

Students respond by selecting one of your predefined answers. Depending on the question, it can be a great idea to supply multiple defensible answers to make the question more challenging and spark discussion. For example, students can fill in the blank with the correct use of the word comer.

1. Put your question, instructions, and/or image(s) directly onto your slide.
2. Open the Pear Deck for Google Slides Add-on or the PowerPoint Online Add-in. In the sidebar, scroll down to the Ask Students a Question section. Click on the Choice button.

During your presentation Session

Click Start Lesson to present a Session and have students join. When you click Show responses, the anonymous aggregate display on the Projector View shows the tallies. You can also display each choice individually by clicking on the Grid View.

• Overlaid Layout (tally)
• Grid View

There you have it, the five Interactive Questions you can ask your students! Curious about how to make the most of these slides? Email help@peardeck.com.