Poll Everywhere

Overview
Poll Everywhere is an interactive polling tool which can be a great way to assess students’ knowledge and understanding.  The teacher creates the activity ahead of the session using the variety of question types available in Poll Everywhere and then presents the quiz during a session to the students. The quizzes can be embedded into PowerPoint slides using the Plug-in available in the Software Centre provided by IT Services. The responses are captured and can be reflected upon at a later time especially if the information is related to feedback or understanding of a topic. 

In the live session, students use their web-enabled devices to access the quiz through a specific web link or the freely available app (laptops/tablets/smartphones).  

Pedagogy
Interactive quizzes have been shown to improve student learning & engagement in course content (Quinn, 2016) and by “gamifying” the experience can increase student learning and concentration (Bangerter, 2017). The students are able to individually judge their own understanding (based on their answers and the correct answer) in an anonymous way. The teacher can also reflect upon the effectiveness of their teaching by seeing how many students have got the correct answer. If quizzes or audience response are used within an active teaching environment there is improved engagement from students (Hassanin et al, 2016). This shows that activities using audience response systems require embedding into a session and not as a standalone as there is no effect on student engagement if lectures are not broken up in shorter sections (Hassanin et al, 2016). 

Research into response systems in Learning and Teaching

Hassanin, H et al. (2016), 'Enhancement of student learning and feedback of large group engineering lectures using audience response systems', Journal of Materials Education, 38 (5-6), pp. 175-190

Hooker, J.F. (2016), ‘The development and validation of the student response system benefit scale’, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 32 (2), pp. 120-127

Walklet, E. (2016), ‘The Impact of Student Response Systems on the Learning Experience of Undergraduate Psychology Students’, Psychology Teaching Review, 22 (1), pp. 1-32

Voelkel, S. and Bennett, D. (2013), 'New uses for a familiar technology: introducing mobile phone polling in large classes', Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51 (1), pp. 46-58

Accounts
All staff can access Poll Everywhere, just sign in with your staff email and password.  You may be prompted to sign in twice when first accessing this resource.  Any issues, please contact the Digital Learning Team: digitallearning@leedsbeckett.ac.uk / 0113 812 5410

 
In action
See what it looks like in action at the University of Westminster.