Poll: What are you thinking?

We would know that if I asked you to respond digitally, in real time, and I displayed the results. We can do that in the class now - "Quick, students...pull out one of your mobile devices!"

Image courtesy of Duke University Digital Initiative

If you haven't seen it yet, we're (semi)-supporting Poll Everywhere at UWT. You use the Web-based software from Any/Everywhere to create a poll. T/F, multiple choice or short answers. Save the poll, and students participate by visiting a fast mobile-friendly (phone, laptop, tablet) Web site, displayed for that poll. 

They choose how to answer your question based on the technology they carry: Web page, via txt, or Twitter. Instructions are displayed on-screen for each type of response. And then the poll updates and displays summary results in real time. Wow.

Instructors who have used clickers before understand the value of polling, and those now using cloud-based polling understand the great leap in not having students purchase (and lose or let the battery run down on) costly clickers.  We also get back the lost time in passing out, explaining, dealing with dead batteries and collecting clickers brought to the classroom, when supplied by IT. 

Polling offers instructors a new set of possibilities when it moves to the Web. Colleagues are using it to anonymously to test understanding, to do end-of-class 2-minute assessments, to take attendance and more. Give it a try.

Active learning, collecting group work, engaging reticent learners. You can do that in moments with cloud-based polling software. 

Well, you can if you have less that 40 students in your class. That's the semi-support. Forty responses is where Poll Everywhere cuts off the free license. Larger classes means you'll need to poll in groups. Sorry.

So I'll end with the good news. There's rumor that Canvas is building polling software into their LMS. Colleagues at UW-IT say they've actually seen a demo of the pilot and it should be in production within a year. Till then, there's free, easy, fast polling software in the cloud. Check it out.