Poll Everywhere is a software whose sole purpose is for polling, which allows the software to be less expensive while offering several types of questions that may be used to engage students. 

The types of questions Poll Everywhere currently offers include multiple choice, word cloud, Q&A, clickable image, survey, open-ended, and rank order.  When a question is presented, students will be able to respond on their devices, and the professor will get real-time feedback on their answers, which allows them to quickly gauge if students are on the right track by the accuracy of their responses and be able to correct any misconceptions in real-time. 

In the interview, one of the questions types I found most intriguing was the clickable image. This question type presents an image to the students and they must click the correct area for the image. For example, say the image is a photo of a heart and the question asks you to identify the Pulmonary Valve, students will have to click where they believe the Valve is located and the professor will get a “heat map” of where students are clicking.

Additionally, professors are able to automatically share responses with the class. They are also able to mark what questions they would like to be graded and ungraded, which translates into the gradebook within Poll Everywhere. 

Poll Everywhere also makes it easy for professors as they are able to embed questions right into Poll Everywhere and link the software to slideshow presentations. For example, Jessica embeds her Poll Everywhere questions into Microsoft Powerpoint, which creates a separate tab labeled “Poll Everywhere.” Within the tab, it allows professors to insert questions, create new questions, and edit existing questions. Jessica especially loves the convenience of editing existing questions, making it so you can edit them directly in the PowerPoint. With other software, like Top Hat, you have to launch the PowerPoint from their website and lose the ability to make any edits. However, with Poll Everywhere, you insert the questions into the PowerPoint, and you are able to edit directly there without too much hassle.

Christopher also brings up that the tool is extremely useful to a Professor when it comes to office hours. For example, when a student requests to meet, he or she can pull up their past responses and check through their work to see what place the student is in the class and know if they have been actively participating in class or not. Additionally, he mentions that it is a great study tool as it can be used to prepare students for the types of questions that may be asked during formative assessments and see what they may need more help on. 

The main downside that Jessica and Christopher bring up is the gradebook in Poll Everywhere. The gradebook itself is all merged into one, and there is an inability to edit within it effortlessly. Jessica specifically points out that you can not easily separate the students into their designated courses. Additionally, Christopher talks about how transferring grades is done manually, and although it’s not particularly difficult, it is time-consuming. He also notes that part of the issue with gradebook is that Poll Everywhere is not currently integrated into Brightspace but this is in the works.

Student Experience & Feedback

Due to some type of polling software typically needed and used within Biology courses, Jessica and Christopher cannot comment on the efficiency of using polling software. Still, the two have commented on the convenience of having one polling software for students. Generally, students really appreciate the tool and the fact that they do not need to purchase different software for every course. Of course, some students do comment that they wish participating in the polling questions was not for credit or that the questions are too complex. Still, Christopher points out that this is a positive as it allows students to self-assess themselves and shows students what topics they need to prepare more on.

The only truly negative feedback students generally bring up with Poll Everywhere comes at the beginning of the semester when technical issues are common. For example, some students have experienced some glitches with logging into Poll Everywhere, where they may need to reset their passwords. Some students have also commented that they wish they could see the questions presented on their devices rather than just the ability to respond.