Vivek Sundar Magesh
Department of Information Systems, School of Computing (SOC) 

Vivek discusses his experience of applying Poll Everywhere to enhance student participation in his course lectures, and how he refined its use based on students’ initial response to the classroom response system.

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Magesh, V. S. (2024, June 26). My experience with Poll Everywhere: Refining its use during lectures based on student feedback. Teaching Connections. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/teachingconnections/2024/06/26/my-experience-with-poll-everywhere-refining-its-use-during-lectures-based-on-student-feedback/

 

When the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, it affected many aspects of life, including classroom teaching and learning. Educators and students alike had to get used to preparing for and attending virtual classes. Now that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, most classes in NUS have resumed the face-to-face format. I have observed that students who are used to attending lectures virtually, appear increasingly inclined to watch lecture recordings instead of attending live lectures. I believe university life can help students build friendships and connections that potentially last a lifetime and can serve them well both professionally and personally. As such, as educators, we need to find ways to encourage student attendance in live lectures so that they can develop these peer connections. In Semester 1 of AY2023/24, I experimented with a tool—Poll Everywhere—to improve classroom participation for the course IS2218 “Digital Platforms for Business” and I share my experience in this post.

 

Poll Everywhere, or a similar classroom response software, facilitates classroom participation. The instructor can raise questions or generate polls, and students can use the software to answer these questions. For instance, in the very first lecture of IS2218, I conduct a poll to ascertain the composition of the students by their department and year of study. This helps me tweak the course content based on the audience. It also serves as an ice-breaker, encouraging student participation. Students can respond anonymously, or after logging into the system with their credentials. Based on my observations, anonymous usage can potentially improve class participation as students are free to express themselves without their identity revealed. However, the converse could also be true since there is no extra credit involved when doing this anonymously. In my course, students were allowed to use Poll Everywhere anonymously.

 

It is especially hard in large classes (such as mine with around 250 students), to gauge if students have understood the subject matter and if they are involved in the class. Most students tend to remain reticent in such large class settings, and the auditoriums themselves do not allow for easy interaction between students and the instructor.

 

During the application of Poll Everywhere in the first half of IS2218, I was pleasantly surprised by the level of student involvement and participation. Every session had hundreds of comments and questions that kept the atmosphere alive. Almost all comments or questions which emerged from the questions or polls were relevant to the subject matter. I was initially concerned that creating an anonymous poll could promote an influx of comments that were outside of the course content and addressing them could use up class time. However, the comments generated from the polls were mostly relevant to the course content. Questions and arguments pertaining to IS2218 were freely raised and where needed, I addressed students’ concerns about gaining a better understanding of the more difficult concepts by repeating them until they managed to grasp these concepts. Classroom attendance also visibly improved from the last offering of the course. Students felt involved in the class. Their views and comments mattered. Anonymity made sure there was literally no downside for students posting a comment which could be perceived as silly by others.

 

The following are students’ comments about Poll Everywhere and attending live lectures that were collected during the mid-course survey as well as the end-of-semester feedback exercise.

However, as the semester progressed, I was confronted with challenges that came with these positive responses. I was falling behind the schedule provided in the syllabus due to having to address the sheer volume of questions and clarifications generated from the polls during the class. To address this, I provided additional recordings with content that we should have otherwise covered in the regular class time. Students expressed that this increased their workload. Students also felt that the lecture’s narrative flow was unduly affected by the number of questions that I answered from time to time on Poll Everywhere. They expressed these sentiments through the mid-course feedback, as listed below:

 

I did some introspection during the mid-semester break, and realised that with newer tools to encourage student participation, one should also be mindful of certain facts. For every topic I had covered in IS2218, out of 250-strong cohort, there would always be one or two students who would want a concept repeated, which could be due to their own inattentiveness or simply because they want to hear it again for clarity. However, it does not necessarily mean a significant number of students feel the same way. It might be easier to explain some of these concepts to those students separately after class. As instructors, it is hard to dismiss a question or comment that is posted by a student since it provides immediate feedback as to whether we have conveyed the course content effectively. However, it is possible that most students have clearly understood the concept explained, and repeating it uses up valuable lecture time.

 

In the second half of the semester, mindful of these facts, I made some changes in how I applied Poll Everywhere in my lectures. This time, I applied Poll Everywhere only at specific times during the lecture. I made a judgment call on answering only certain course-related questions (or requests for repeating concepts). My criteria on whether to answer the questions were based on the following factors: the inherent difficulty of the particular course concept, the number of such requests, and whether a lack of understanding of the concept could hinder further understanding of the course content during the lecture. As a result, many questions were taken offline after the class. As a result, during the second half of the semester, all my classes ended on time without any need for additional videos. The students expressed appreciation for this, both in class and in post-course feedback surveys. A few of the students’ comments from end-of-semester feedback which reflect these sentiments are reproduced verbatim below:

 

In summary, as with most technologies such as Poll Everywhere, one needs to be mindful when applying it to one’s course. While judicious use of the technology would in most instances promote learning outcomes, it would require a few iterations of applying the technology in one’s class settings to gain a better understanding of it in order to get the best out of it.

 

Vivek Sundar Magesh is a Lecturer in the Department of Information Systems and Analytics. He teaches data-driven marketing and digital platforms for business, and his research interests include data science and business analytics, developing economies, social media, and new product diffusion. Vivek can be reached at vsm@nus.edu.sg.