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Poll Everywhere Comes to Campus
Posted September 8, 2017
By: Jonathan Coons and Emily Keener
Poll Everywhere, a mobile-only audience response system, replaced Turning Technologies clickers at SIUE this fall. To make integrating this new classroom technology a little easier, we wanted to share a few tips from Poll Everywhere and ITS:
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Make sure students are connected to our wireless network. Since students are using tablets, laptops, or most likely, cell phones to respond to polls, they will need reliable online access. SIUE's wireless network, Eduroam, is more reliable than a cell network and it doesn't cost the student any additional charge. Students can find tips for connecting to Eduroam in the ITS KnowledgeBase, or at the ITS Help Desk.
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Start with an icebreaker. You can use Poll Everywhere’s PowerPoint add-on to insert a question at the beginning of a PowerPoint lecture. This will help familiarize students with the new technology before you might use it at a more critical learning point. For more ideas about using Poll Everywhere to help break the ice, check out this blog post "25 icebreaker questions for live audience polling."
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Keep it low stakes (at least in the beginning). Poll Everywhere has a grading feature that is integrated with Blackboard, but it's not always necessary to poll for points. You can also use Poll Everywhere to see how well students are grasping key concepts, understand where they stand before an assessment, or just to spark a lively class debate in class.
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Let templates and bulk editing options do the heavy lifting for you. Instructors can use the template feature to apply common visual settings, like timers, to all polls at once. Poll Everywhere also has a bulk Edit feature where you adjust response settings, such as requiring registration for graded polling, to many polls or groups at once.Check out the ITS KnowledgeBase for more on bulk editing with Poll Everywhere.