Polling

Polling (a.k.a. surveying) offers several pedagogical advantages for strengthening faculty and student relationships:

• Student Engagement
  • Getting to know your students before the first day of class.
  • Think-Pair-Share (a.k.a. breakout discussion sessions).
• Student Evaluation (informal, formative, and summative)
  • Preparing students for a discussion topic, particularly when introducing difficult or contentious subjects (e.g. religion, politics, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies etc.).
  • Determining how well are students understanding your lecture or course content.

How you use polling technology really depends on your course goals and teaching style. Some faculty prohibit students from bringing devices into their classrooms, and therefore they favor physical ‘clickers’. Others are more comfortable with or even encourage student devices and so they have more options for student engagement and feedback. Similarly, some faculty may prefer out of classroom (asynchronous) polling, either to encourage honest responses or because the goal of the polling is important but adjacent to the course subject. Other faculty want real-time feedback to their lecture or discussion content to gage comprehension or clarity.

Please contact your Academic Technology Consultant to discuss how you’d like to engage your students.

• Common Polling Scenarios

  Below are common polling scenarios and the products recommended and supported by Williams College.

  • In-Class Polling

    Prohibit Student Devices

    The products below must be distributed to and collected from students with each use. The number of clickers available is limited and requires sharing across the curriculum.

    • iClickers - Anonymous or named responses. Physical broadcast clickers that students use to respond to prepared questions by an instructor. Clickers must be charged before using. Reliable in most classrooms (see Polling Technologies below).
    • Plickers - Anonymous responses. Novel tool that lets faculty create multiple choice questions with their students using cards that are then scanned by the faculty using their smartphone.

    Allow Student Devices

    Faculty can quickly provide their students with a quick code to their polling survey that students then access on their personal devices.

    • PollEverywhere - A mobile-based tool that lets you create and host live polls, surveys, Q&A's, and more with your audiences.
    • Google Forms - Anonymous or named responses. Easy to setup and allows a wide range of question types. Responses can be viewed in a spreadsheet.

  • Out-of-Class Polling

    • PollEverywhere - A mobile-based tool that lets you create and host live polls, surveys, Q&A's, and more with your students.
    • Google Forms - Anonymous or named responses. Easy to setup and allows a wide range of question types. Responses can be viewed in a spreadsheet.
    • GLOW Quizzes - Named responses only. Already integrated into your GLOW course and allows a wide range of question types.

• Polling Technologies

  Technologies are always changing. Those that were once reliable may no longer perform well due to diminishing support from a technology maker in favor of their newer replacement technologies – and those newer replacement technologies may be radically different from what preceded them. 

  NOTE: Since no single technology can adequately meet all potential uses, sometimes teaching practices must be adapted to the most reliable technologies available. 

  Use of polling technologies is not trivial, and great care should be given to the diversity of student backgrounds. In the past decade, there has been a general market shift toward online polling solutions that leverage people’s smart phones, and for this reason questions around both accessibility and privacy have increased significantly.

  Williams College has evaluated several polling solutions suitable for most teaching and learning scenarios.

  Polling solutions fall into two categories: platforms and broadcast kits.

  Platforms are cloud-based (internet) polling solutions that rely on bring-your-own-device (BYOD) such as a smart phone and an online website that communicate via cellular telemetry.

  Pros: Larger market-place of solutions (more options). No burden of managing physical polling devices. Versatile, can be used in-class or outside of class.

  Cons: FERPA – responses may not be 100% anonymous, especially if students must subscribe and login to the polling platform. Introduces BYOD disparities in terms of both student backgrounds and personal device capabilities.

  Broadcast Kits are stand-alone polling solutions that utilize physical polling devices and local software that communicate via radio signal.

  Pros: Privacy – responses are anonymous. Suitable for faculty who prohibit student devices in class. Equalizes technology access (i.e. avoids BYOD disparities).

  Cons: Limited market-place of solutions (fewer options). Class-time must be dedicated to distributing/collecting the polling devices. Does not work reliably in all classroom spaces (potentially poor performance due to electromagnetic interference or architectural/structural obstructions). Always test functionality prior to class time.

  • • • Maybe Room of Sawyer Library (intermittent reliability; ~100% failure). 
      • Weston Field Alumni room (consistently unreliable; ~50% failure).
      • New Williams Inn (intermittent reliability; ~40% failure)