Focus on Assessment - Apr 18, 2011

By Emily Rimland and Alice Whiteside

Poll Everywhere is a web-based student response system that allows students to reply
anonymously to questions and displays responses in real time. If you are familiar with clickers,
this is the same idea delivered through different technology. With Poll Everywhere, students
respond to questions via text message – they are pretty surprised when we ask them to take out
their cell phones at the beginning of class! One of the advantages of Poll Everywhere is that
students are already familiar with the technology involved.

Why you’d want to use it
So why use a student response system? Poll Everywhere or clickers can be integrated into
library instruction in a variety of ways: as a warm-up or icebreaker activity, as a discussion
starter, and as a tool for assessment, just to give a few examples. You can use them to learn
something about your audience or “take the temperature” in the classroom, providing an
opportunity to change your instruction based on this feedback. Although many of us already
incorporate one or more of these tactics into our instruction through various means (e.g. asking
for a show of hands), student response systems offer a way to diversify how we ask for
feedback. Incorporating different ways for students to engage in class leads to greater student
involvement and may help make the classroom a more comfortable environment for students
who are less likely to volunteer to speak but still have something to share! The anonymity of
responses both helps encourage shy participants and also invites sometimes brutally honest
answers. For example, we ask our students how they feel about research – and they do tell us
how they really feel! Additionally, classroom response systems provide the added value of being
able to archive and track results for future analysis.

How we’re using it in the classroom for assessment
We have been using Poll Everywhere as a warm-up activity, a catalyst for discussion and also
for assessment. At the end of a class, we ask students “Did you find some resources today for
your assignment? If so, how many?” They respond to this question in a multiple-choice format.
Our main goal is to give them the skills and information they need to successfully complete their
research for the assignment at hand, and it gives us a tangible measure of the usefulness of the
session. It also gives us a chance to reiterate that they should talk to us if they did not find any
relevant resources. In our end-of-semester evaluations, we have incorporated a question
corresponding to the affective question we ask in the beginning of class, and we are looking
forward to analyzing these responses as another means of measuring the impact of our
teaching.

How to get started
Go to polleverywhere.com and click Take the Tour for more details to supplement what we’ve
covered here. If you’d like to try it and get started, check under the Pricing section and sign up
for a free account listed under the Business and Non-profit tab. Poll Everywhere bases their
account types on the audience size and extra features. The free account gets you an audience
size of up to 30 responses which works nicely for many library instruction sessions. It doesn’t
have all the bells and whistles but it’s satisfactory to accommodate most of your needs. If you
want to upgrade, there are a variety accounts to suit your needs.

Tips and tricks
Since we’ve been using this since fall 2010 we’ve developed a few tips and tricks we’d like to
share:
• Wait until everyone is in the class and ready to go before asking the first question. We’ve tried
having the question on the projector and asking students to respond as they enter the room.
This sounds good in theory but in practice we found ourselves repeating the directions
countless times. There also seemed to be more “buy in” when you have everyone’s attention at
once and students see their peers partaking in the questions.
• Consider hiding responses until a majority has replied to a question. Seeing results in real time
can have benefits and drawbacks. The benefits are the “wow” factor of seeing responses
automagically appear on the screen a few moments after submitting them and being able to
discuss each response as it rolls by. This can also be a disadvantage because later responders
will tend to jump on the bandwagon of earlier responders. For example, one person may dislike
research and respond with a negative comment. The students who follow may then feel peer
pressured or uncreative in their responses and answer in the same way. We’ve done it both
ways—see what works for you.
• Change your instruction based on the feedback. You may discover by asking a question that
most of the class has already used Proquest. If this is the case, change your plan and skip
ProQuest or do a quick review. Your students will appreciate your responsiveness.
• To date, we’ve never gotten a crude or mean response but you may want to mention “no
expletives please” if you’re worried about it. That aside, encourage your audience to be brutally
honest about their answers and remind them it’s completely anonymous.
• Remind students to put their phones away after you’re done with the questions. This lets them
know you’re not condoning texting during the rest of the class.
• Let students know this is voluntary. Most will have unlimited texting plans so it won’t cost them
anything to participate, but don’t force them. It also helps to add that you are doing this to learn
about their experiences and inform your knowledge. Most will chose to participate—in fact we
see the adoption rate go up as the class goes on.
• If there’s a technical glitch (very infrequently) have a backup—a show of hands still works
nicely!

Interested in learning more about response systems?
See Educause’s “7 Things You Should Know About Clickers”:
http://www.educause.edu/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout Click/156805 Make sure you save
this date to learn about Penn State’s new standardized clicker system, i>clicker. Dave Test will
cover the basics of the new clicker, how to use the software with PowerPoint as well was with
any other application, and we’ll do a live demo so you can see first-hand just how easy it is to
use i>clicker for classes, training sessions, meetings, and more. New Clicker System –
Interactive Information Session Tuesday, July 12, 10 a.m., Foster Auditorium and Media Site
Live (instructions forthcoming)