Polling technologies (Free)

In education it is important to gather data from students for the sake of an educator's efforts to be effective and efficient through their coursework. Evaluation of activities and feedback from the students can drastically influence needed changes in a course. Through technologies available, it is possible for students to give feedback easily, anonymously and conveniently. In some cases, the rate of participation in questionnaires increased by 80% by utilizing methods that could be embedded in the LMS user-interface (Park, 2014). This can significantly impact the usefulness of data collected by the majority of the student body. There are many services available that have a robust set of features, but often come at a price which are often a deterrent for educators who wish to poll their students. In this short list, three services will be listed and explained that are currently completely free to the end user.

The first and most notable is Google Forms, which is part of Google Drive, a robust set of solutions that are available to anyone willing to create an account with Google. Google Forms allows the creation of a form with standard types of questions, such as likert, scale, grid, multiple choice, free-text, etc., that will automatically create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets (another Google product similar in design and functionality to Microsoft's Excel). With a little bit of formatting rules and formulas, the Google Sheet can be made to create reports than can allow an educator to quickly and discernibly determine trends and side-by-side comparisons on an ongoing basis. Reports and results generated can be shared with students to increase student responsibility toward their success and appeal to meta-cognitive methods of learning, as well as allowing the instructor to better understand the cognition profile of the cohort (Haddad & Kalaani, 2014). The utilization of this tool can be simply be embedded in LMS by utilizing tools provided by Google, or by citing a link in the LMS. The visualization of the survey results can be shown with the embed tools in Google Sheets.

The next tool is called mQlicker, which is another web based service that could be embedded within

an LMS. This particular service is also completely free and exports to an Excel for recording purposes. One fantastic feature of mQlicker is that it allows surveys or questionnaires to be interactive during a lecture, online presentation or over a long span of time. The results from surveys can be embedded within PowerPoint presentations and can be utilized by speakers in real time, to aid instructors in designing the talk to best suit the audience. MQlicker also offers a good deal more question and answering options that utilize java, such as drag and drop. The surveys are completely optimized to be used on a mobile device, so learners can participate in surveys on the go, or on their own mobile devices during a lecture, presentation or as they are notified, as well as within an LMS. Students have reported that they prefer to utilize their own devices for these types of interaction and are receptive to the functional use (Ada, 2014).

Thirdly, PollDaddy is another service that is a blend of the former two. It is a paid service, but does allow users to use a free account with some limited options. Results can be embedded in blogs, websites or an LMS and it has a very simple drag-and-drop way of creating surveys. The free service does limit the export feature, but the reporting methods are robust and will give an instructor and the students a worthwhile visual to analyze.



References

Ada, M. B. (2014). Fostering Students'‘Use My Own Device'Attitude: Developing All-in-one Mobile learning Application. International Journal of Technology and Educational Marketing (IJTEM), 4(1), 15-33.

Haddad, R. J., & Kalaani, Y. (2014). Google Forms: A Real-Time Formative Assessment Approach for Adaptive Learning.

 Park, J. Y. (2014). Course evaluation: Reconfigurations for learning with learning management systems. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(5), 992-1006.