Bad news: Google moderator is shutting down June 30, 2015
From Google’s website:
“Unfortunately, Google Moderator has not had the usage we had hoped, so we’ve made the difficult decision to close down the product. We want to ensure users have enough time to export their Moderator series data using our Takeout tool. Please take a look at the timeline below for more information.
March 30, 2015 is the first day that you can download your Google Moderator data from Takeout. Your data from past Moderator series will be available in Takeout for at least two years.
June 30, 2015 will be the last day you can create a new series, ask a question, or vote on a question. For the month of July, Google Moderator will be “read-only.”
July 31, 2015 is Moderator’s last day. The site will no longer be available in any form, but you will be able to access data from past Moderator series through our Takeout tool for at least two years.
Thank you for asking and voting on questions with Moderator over the past several years.”
But don’t fret there are other options that are just as good at accomplishing the same goals.
Poll Everywhere
For in class rankings try Poll Everywhere’s Q&A/brainstorming question type. This question type isn’t turned on by default so you’ll need to go into Settings > Labs and turn on Q&A / Brainstorm. This question type allows participants to submit open-ended questions AND vote on other students’ responses, just like in Google Moderator.
OAKS Discussions
The OAKS Discussion board allows you to rate posts in a similar way to the rating system in Google Moderator. When creating a new Topic you can choose either an Up Vote Only Rating Scheme or Up Vote/Down Vote Rating Scheme. Both of these options will allow students to add new ideas AND to vote on other students’ ideas. They can either give positive votes only or they can give positive and negative votes.
If you are a Google Moderator user and are still concerned about getting the same functionality please contact your Instructional Technologist.
