A blended teaching method comprising:
- an instructor providing live, in-person, instruction to a plurality of students;
- at least periodically displaying an engagement prompt to the plurality of students on an electronically-updatable class display that is visible by the plurality of students;
- the engagement prompt comprising an action instruction displayed on the electronically-updatable class display that instructs the plurality of students to perform an action in response to the engagement prompt;
- the plurality of students communicating with the instructor via a respective one of a plurality of participant devices;
- one or more of the plurality of students performing an action on the respective one of the plurality of participant devices to demonstrate that the one or more of the plurality of students are paying attention to class instructions, which action corresponds to the displayed action instruction of the engagement prompt and is responsive to the engagement prompt;
- an instructor display, viewable by the instructor, displaying communications from the plurality of students;
- capturing inputs from the one or more of the plurality of students performing the action and making a determination of whether the one or more of the plurality of students are paying attention based at least in part on an amount of time taken by each of the one or more of the plurality of students to perform the action after the engagement prompt was displayed and whether each of the one or more of the plurality of students performed the correct action, wherein the correct action is not dependent on the plurality of students knowing the content of a lesson plan;
- and, wherein at least periodically displaying an engagement prompt comprises at least one of:
- randomly displaying the engagement prompt,
- automatically displaying the engagement prompt, and
- displaying, the engagement prompt upon instructor command;
- wherein the content of the engagement prompt is unrelated to the lesson plan the instructor is providing at the time the engagement prompt is displayed;
- updating indicia of a level of class attention based on determinations of whether the one or more of the plurality of students are paying attention;
- displaying student attention on the instructor display, wherein student attention is determined based at least in part on a past average of prior responses of a respective student;
- displaying the level of class attention on the instructor display;
- and
- displaying another indicia on the electronically-updatable class display and the plurality of students each using the respective one of the plurality of participant devices to obtain an image of the other indicia or to otherwise scan the other indicia, and making a determination that a respective student is in attendance based on the image or the scan.