MEME MONDAY IN A NUTSHELL
Meme Monday was a semester-long activity we used in our Organizational Behavior classes at Binghamton University. Each Friday, students would submit a meme that captured the course content for the week. Then, on Monday, we had Meme Monday in which students would vote for their favorite meme in the class. This was lots of fun for me and the students! Plus, it was a great way to succinctly summarize the course material in a memorable way.
MEME MONDAY EXAMPLES
STUDENT FEEDBACK
Memes are a very smart way to keep the class engaged in the content.
He makes class enjoyable with memes.
I love how he integrated the course content with memes.
MEME MONDAY:
A HOW-TO GUIDE
- Step 1: Familiarize yourself with memes
- https://imgflip.com/memegenerator is a good place to start
- Step 2: Create Weekly Discussion Forums for students to post their weekly memes
- This step is only necessary if you want to use memes for course credit.
- It’s easy to set up in Blackboard. There is likely something similar on other platforms.
- Note: Using the discussion forum made it easy to grade, as their posts automatically appear in the grading column as “need grading”. Weekly memes were 5% of the students’ final grade in our course.
- Step 3: Create a Google Drive folder for the class
- This is where students will upload their memes…giving you the material for the Meme Monday activities.
- For students in our class, this was a chance to win extra credit.
- Participation was around 95+% with this set up.
- Here’s an example of what it looks like on Blackboard: Blackboard Meme Screenshot.png
- Tips:
- If your school has Google email, you can restrict access to university email addresses. This helps protect the folder, however, it is not necessary.
- Change permissions to allow people to “Edit” the folder. Again, it’s more protected if you restrict access to university email addresses, but will work just as well if you share with “anyone with the link”, as I have done in the example below.
- Step 4: Create sub folders for each week (Week 1, 2, 3, etc.). Link these weekly folders to a weekly module/task list/schedule on your LMS (e.g., Blackboard) for convenience.
- Here’s an example folder and subfolders: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fYXHS-u_AspTNO-CJ2QxeMfQyDOWJsa5?usp=sharing
- Step 5: (optional step) After the class roster is relatively stable, assign each student a memeID (1 – 280, in our case). Late joiners can be assigned higher numbers as they join. The memeIDs are used to minimize bias in the process.
- Step 6: Introduce the assignment to the class. Here’s our description on the syllabus: “Each Friday, you will post a meme in the designated discussion board for course credit. The meme is intended to represent the material we discussed in class that week. For a chance at extra credit, you must also post your meme in the shared Google Drive folder. Note: The meme must be customized by you.”
- Tip: Describe what is appropriate/inappropriate for class memes.
- Here are examples I used in class: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WVkgWEV9VhifB2ikp42GTuGdaK3eskGI/view?usp=sharing
- Step 7: Review the memes prior to the first class of the following week (Monday in our case) and choose your favorites.
- Tips:
- I downloaded any memes that were relevant and made me LOL, then whittled them down to my top 6.
- If you have a quiz or exam coming up, you can choose memes that highlight certain topics that will be covered on the quiz/exam. This is a fun/easy way for students to review the material.
- Tips:
- Step 8: Add your top memes (Meme of the Week nominees) to a PPT/slideshow.
- Tip: Label the memes, “A”, “B”, “C” or “1”, “2”, “3”, etc. to help with the next step
- Here’s an example/template: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WVkgWEV9VhifB2ikp42GTuGdaK3eskGI/view?usp=sharing
- Tip: Label the memes, “A”, “B”, “C” or “1”, “2”, “3”, etc. to help with the next step
- Step 9: Create a Poll/Survey for students to vote for their Meme of the Week (MOTW) in class
- Tip: Using the labels of “A”, “B”, “C”, etc. allows you to easily reuse the poll/quiz each week. Just remember to clear the results, if you’re reusing the poll/quiz.
- This can be done using Zoom polling, Google Forms, Polleverywhere.com, etc.
- Tip: Using the labels of “A”, “B”, “C”, etc. allows you to easily reuse the poll/quiz each week. Just remember to clear the results, if you’re reusing the poll/quiz.
- Step 10: Kick off the first class of the week, with “Meme [day of the week]”!
- Tips:
- Use this time to review important material for the students
- Make this fun. You know the memes, so you can prepare your jokes/content ahead of time. I imagine this being like a David Letterman Top Ten List segment.
- Tips:
- Step 11: Have students complete a poll/quiz to vote for their favorite meme
- Tip: Share the live results on the projector/screen to make it more exciting for the students
- Step 12: (Optional) Issue extra credit to the winning student(s)
- Step 13: (Optional) Post the winning memes on a course website
- Tips:
- Create a dedicated Google Site for the class. This is easy and free to do. Plus, it gives you one more way to keep the students engaged in the course.
- Add important links and information to the class’ special Google Site.
- Here’s an example: https://sites.google.com/binghamton.edu/mgmt311-spring21/home
- Create a dedicated Google Site for the class. This is easy and free to do. Plus, it gives you one more way to keep the students engaged in the course.
- Tips:
Note: For topics that are not meme-appropriate, infographics are a great alternative.
- There are free tools, such as Canva, to help students create infographics.
- Infographics are arguably better tools for review, but they take longer for students to make and are not quite as fun.
- Here’s an infographic example from class: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ngWovN6EMd4QPq-DvbVNjZFJnSNH-1L/view?usp=sharing
MORE MEMES
Some Student Evaluations Even Came in the Form of Memes…😢
