Update
Acadly now has Zoom integration to make online teaching 10x more interactive! You can check out our demo video of Zoom polling here.
Acadly is a Classroom Response System
In other words, Acadly helps professors conduct classroom polls and quizzes. While polling apps are known for a lot of things, versatility is not one of them.
This is a common misconception. Not only is classroom polling versatile, there is a strong argument for using these apps in all classrooms, no matter what the size or the discipline.
From popular applications like quizzing to under-utilised ones like Exit Tickets and metacognition, in-class polls offer educators many amazing possibilities.
Here’s a useful infographic on 10 ways in which you can use polls inside your classroom.
About the #SmarterLectureProject
The #SmarterLectureProject by Acadly is a series where we write about one teaching technique every week and summarise it with a nice, shareable infographic.
The 10 ways of using polls inside the classroom
Let’s cut to the chase. Here’s some elaboration, examples, videos and tips.
1. Quizzes
To check your class’ understanding during lectures.
There are many ways to skin this cat (no cats were hurt in the making of this blog post).
- Host a poll (ungraded): A live histogram of the results updates as responses pour in
- Host a quiz: Students get to view their score, and you can add multiple questions to a single quiz.
There is also the more traditional technique of letting students write their responses on a sheet of paper but what is this, the stone age?
GIF DEMOS: Here’s what a graded quiz looks like. You can view question-wise analytics at any time later on.
2. Peer Learning
Get students to collaborate and learn from each other
We’ll spare you the huge body of research that supports the idea that peer learning works better than learning alone. What’s great about polls is that they can help demonstrate these benefits to the class.
1. Conduct a quiz, 2. Split the class into groups for peer learning and discussion, and 3. Conduct a quiz again. The performance boost will be self-evident, and the shared goal of improvement will help everyone in the class.
GIF DEMO: Help students stay on-task with an On-Screen Timer
3. Warm-up for discussions
Set the tone for a discussion with a question that attacks the crux of the matter.
The best way to stoke a raging discussion? Polarize the class. When it’s student vs. student, you can sit back and enjoy the show.
Acadly doesn’t just give you room for polls. It gives your poll a dedicated messaging space too, so you have ample room to discuss details and nuances both during and after the lecture.
GIF DEMO: Acadly’s context-aware discussions place the discussion right next to the poll
4. Feedback and Exit Tickets
Get feedback at the end of your lectures with anonymous polls.
This may sound like an avoidable heartache to inflict upon yourself but feedback polls can give you valuable information about the class’ understanding of the subject matter discussed and can help with course-correction (literally).
Exit tickets are also a great way for teachers to glean insights into what works with a group and what does not. As a bonus, the anticipation of an exit ticket will keep your students attentive!
GIF DEMOS: Anonymous polls are a must when you collect feedback
5. Opinions on course policies
Giving your students a say in course policies helps build ownership.
With today’s generation of students, what gets crowd-sourced, gets done. Using polls, you can get students to co-create the course policy with you.
Do they want a larger class participation component or are they happy with tests?
Would they prefer randomly-assigned groups rather than go through the agony of finding group partners and the horse-trading that goes with it?
What do they think would be a reasonable deadline for the homework?
GIF DEMO: Here’s an example of letting students decide a course policy.
6. Interactive demo
Before a demo, ask students what they think will happen, based on what they learnt.
What do you think will happen when I pass this beam of light through this solution?
- The entire liquid will light up
- The beam of light will bend upwards
- The beam of light will bend downwards
- The beam of light will be reflected back
Professor HC Verma, whose work we’ve covered in an earlier blog post, is the king of in-class demos, and this is something he never forgets to do. Rather than simply showing a demo, he invariably asks what the outcome is going to be.
Ask. Show. Tell. Keep students attentive. More attention = more retention.
GIF DEMO: Something worked well last term? Reuse stuff with copy-paste
7. Dispel misconceptions
Establish the prevalence of popular myths before you dispel them for dramatic effect.
Q. What is a tomato?
- A fruit
- A vegetable
- A stem
- A flower
Have your class answer a question like this through a poll and you will find that it is so much more effective than just saying “Did you know that tomato is a fruit?” People, in general, remember a fact much better when they find it dispels a long-held notion.
Of course, to know that a tomato is a fruit is knowledge. To not add it to a fruit salad, is wisdom.
GIF DEMO: Make the process exciting and dramatic with Realtime Updates
8. Social experiments
Run a survey in class to demonstrate the link between opinions and population segments.
Let us take the example of the question as old as time (by which we mean the time when women drivers made their first appearance on the roads of the US)
“Men or women: Who are the better drivers?”
A 2010 TeleNav Driving Behavior survey suggested that both genders have similar views on abiding by and breaking the rules of the road, but males were more than 10 times as likely as females to believe that they were the better drivers.
Won’t it be interesting to pose question like these to your students, and make them aware of their biases, if any, in light of what the data says?
GIF DEMO: Of course, you’ll need to analyze data in Excel (Apple Numbers fans, anyone?) Either way, these on-demand CSV exports will help!
9. Metacognition
AKA introspection, or self-assessment, helps students reflect on, and better their learning.
Ask your students to respond to polls that make them think about questions like “What do I already know about this topic?”, “What confused me in class today?”, “How did this class change my thinking about this topic?” or “What part of my preparation worked or did not work for me in this test?”
“Thinking about your own thinking” — the experts call it meta-cognition. We have a sneaky feeling a certain Mr Nolan might call it Thinkception™
10. Students pick method, you solve
Pose a problem and list possible methods to solve it. Students pick what they want to see a demo of.
Get students to decide how they’d like to see a problem solved. Of course, this is contingent upon the fact that there really are multiple ways to solve a problem. In advanced STEM subjects, there often are. This can help you identify what confuses students more, and direct your efforts accordingly.
And there you have it!
If you’ve tried using polls in your class, we’d love to hear about it in the comments. Follow the #SmarterLectureProject for more amazing tips every week!
With a lot of ❤ from Acadly, a smart classroom platform that helps you deliver engaging lectures and automate attendance with one-tap, instant roll calls.
