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Instructional Technology Newsletter 19
Classroom Technology – Polling with Plickers
Peter Ruiz-Haas, Associate Professor of Chemistry
Reid Oechslin, Instructional Technologist
April 2016
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Peter Ruiz-Hass teaches the introductory course General Chemistry in the 250-seat Francis Auditorium. Although the class size is limited to 48, it’s one of the larger classes taught in the Residential College for Women.
In Instructional Technology Newsletter 11, Dr. Ruiz-Haas wrote about his search for student polling systems to increase student involvement in the class. The systems he wrote about are cloud-based and run on the student’s phone, tablet, or laptop.
Many faculty members object to students using devices in class. And a small proportion of students don’t own a smartphone or a laptop. This past semester, Dr. Ruiz-Haas tried a new approach: a very low-tech student device paired with high-tech cloud processing.
Dr. Ruiz-Haas is using the free Plickers.com app on his phone paired with special cards given to each student at the beginning of the semester. A pattern of black and white blocks on the card identifies the student to the software. Depending on how the student orients the card when she holds it up during the polling session, she can answer A, B, C, or D to questions that are built into the PowerPoint of the lecture.
Dr. Ruiz-Haas starts the Plickers app on his phone that has been pre-loaded with the poll questions and answers, and walks around the front of the room capturing the image of the students’ cards.
On the phone screen he can see the name of each student and their answer superimposed over the picture of the class. (There has to be some sophisticated work being done in the cloud to make this happen!) When he has collected all the responses, Dr. Ruiz-Haas switches from the PowerPoint lecture to the Plickers webpage for that poll question. The class can see how many responses each possible answer has received, and then Dr. Ruiz-Haas reveals the correct answer.
Perhaps one reason students respond so well to polling is the quick feedback they get. A poll is like a little game. Even if the student is sure of the answer, it’s still interesting to see how many students chose the other answers.A one-minute YouTube video of polling in Dr. Ruiz-Haas’ General Chemistry class is here:
https://youtu.be/eX60hqOZz8IThe video was shot on a camera phone and edited with the free addition to Microsoft Office called Windows Live Moviemaker. Documentation for this process is here: https://go.marybaldwin.edu/oit/shooting-editing-video-using-android-smartphone-pc/
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