If you’ve been a fan of the TLT blog, and let’s face it…you know you are, then you’ve probably seen blog posts from faculty members talking about how they use polling in their classes. Some have talked about using polls for a “quick check” to gauge student comprehension while others have played with using clicker type quizzes for low stakes testing and assessment. The biggest problem that most faculty have is trying to figure out how to make these polls as accessible as possible for their students. For software like iClickers and Turning Point, your students have to purchase or borrow a dedicated device to input their answers and professors have to bring a base with them to the classroom to receive the electronic poll.
Poll Everywhere eliminates this problem by allowing students to respond with whatever mobile device that they happen to have. Poll Everywhere is a free, online polling that allows you to quickly gauge student understanding using their computers, tablets, or cell phones. The Poll Everywhere educational license purchased by CofC now allows faculty to give quizzes and polls that are not anonymous. It allows you to give polls that are associated with your students’ names, generate a score if desired, or offer anonymous polling. Depending on how the poll is set up and initiated, instructors can choose to employ real time display of answers or hold the answers until they are ready to be shown to the students.
To learn more about the College of Charleston Campus license for Poll Everywhere, please visit http://blogs.charleston.edu/tlttutorials/2013/09/10/poll-everywhere/ or speak to your Neighborhood, Friendly Instructional Technologist if you’d like to have your username added to the campus account!
