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Advisor

r eviews s t And Ard r eview

Poll Everywhere
doi:10.5260/chara.12.3.57

Date of Review: November 15, 2010

HHHH r eviewed by: melanie s ellar
Education Services Librarian Marymount College <msellar@marymountpv.edu>

Composite Score:

a bstract
This article provides an evaluation of Poll Everywhere, a type of audience response system (ARS) also known as a personal response system or, in education circles, as a student polling system. Use of these systems allows for increased interactivity by promoting a two-way flow of communication between the speaker and the audience. The strengths and weaknesses of this service are reviewed with examples of use in higher education and libraries.

is not desired, various business and nonprofit plans (ranging from $15 to $1,400 per month) are available.

product d escription
AUDIENCE RESPONSE Sy STEm S Poll Everywhere is a type of audience response system (ARS), also known as a personal response system or, in education circles, as a student polling system. Using an ARS, a presenter or instructor displays questions on a screen to which the audience responds using some kind of remote device. Responses are then aggregated and displayed graphically in real-time on the screen. These systems allow for increased interactivity by promoting a twoway flow of communication between the speaker and the audience. ARSs have been found to be of particular benefit when working with large groups where communication is challenging or with groups whose members might not otherwise fully participate. Research published over the last decade indicates that classroom use of an ARS can have a significant, positive impact on student learning. Instructors use ARSs to poll student opinions, to assess student comprehension and application of concepts, and to assess student learning through quizzes and exams. For a comprehensive summary of the classroom and learner benefits (and challenges) offered by ARSs, read the article by Kay and LeSage (2009), which reviews the body of literature on the subject. For the last ten years one particular type of ARS has dominated classrooms: handheld remote devices using infrared or radio frequency technology transmit responses to a portable receiving station hooked up to a computer. Some systems are plug-and-play, while others require the installation of proprietary software. Poll Everywhere, launched in 2007, offers an alternative to this traditional setup by simply using an internet connection, a Web browser, and mobile phones; no extra hardware or software is required. POll Ev ERy WHERE To begin using Poll Everywhere, a user must go to the Web site, pick a plan, and create an account. The service is provided entirely in the cloud. Once the account is created, the user can create and store questions in her Web-based account. She can then create three types of questions: multiple choice polls, free-text polls, or goal

pricing
Poll Everywhere offers a variety of plans, both free and paid, which are mainly differentiated by audience size (3020,000) and by type of purchasing institution (business and nonprofit, K12, and higher education). Regardless of the plan, the number of polls per account is unlimited. Users are not charged for voting on a poll; however, if they vote by text message then standard text messaging charges apply. For K12 institutions, the free plan limits the audience size to 32 for use by one teacher. The paid plans range in audience size from 40 (for use by one teacher) to 80 (for use by an unlimited number of teachers in a district); pricing is dependent upon the number of students. Plans also include student identification, advanced reporting, response moderation, custom keywords, and technical support. For institutions of higher education, there is also a free plan available with an audience cap of 32. There are two paid plans. One plan option charges the cost to the students ($14 each per year). The other plan option charges the cost to the instructor ($699 per year) with an unlimited audience size and number of classes. Both paid plans include voter registration, response moderation, reporting features, and technical support. Department or campus-wide plans are also available. Contact Poll Everywhere for a customized quote. The K12 and higher education plans are less expensive than the business and nonprofit normal monthly plans but do require a commitment of a semester or year-long purchase. If that length of contract

FIGURE 1

Creating a New Poll

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FIGURE 2 An Example of a Multiple Choice Question Showing Different Ways to Respond polls (Figure 1). As expected, a multiple choice poll presents the audience with a question and a set of possible answers from which to choose; the results are displayed graphically in a histogram. A free-text poll presents the audience with a question to which they respond with any answer they choose. The results in this case are not aggregated; rather they are displayed individually on the screen. A goal poll sets a fundraising goal and allows people to text-in with donations; the screen graphically displays the progress towards the goal in a pledge thermometer. The audience can respond to a poll in a number of ways: by sending a text message to a short number associated with a question, by tweeting in their response, or by voting via a Web browser (Figure 2). Phone numbers are kept completely private. With paid plans, it is possible to create and associate keywords instead of numbers with answers. As the audience responds, the results are updated and displayed dynamically through a Web browser or through an embedded slide in a PowerPoint presentation. ActiveX must be enabled and Adobe Flash 9 or 10 must be installed on the presenters computer to display the poll and its results. Polls can also be embedded in a blog, LibGuide, or other Web page. No matter what the mechanism an audience member uses to respond, Poll Everywhere aggregates all the data and produces one report. Paid plans allow a presenter or, more likely, an instructor, to forgo the anonymity of responses and associate voters (students) with their responses by requiring them to preregister as participants. Students click on a link in an e-mail invitation and are then asked to verify their mobile phone number and create a participant login. All of answers will be linked to individual profiles. Poll Everywhere also supports tracking of voters answers across multiple polls in paid plans without requiring preregistration. To track answers in this fashion, the instructor creates a free-text poll asking voters to submit their names and IDs. Thereafter, as voters responds to questions their answers are collated and associated with their IDs. Results can then be downloaded from the Reports tab and uploaded, for example, into a spreadsheet or course management system. APPl ICATIONS Poll Everywhere has many potential applications in a library setting. The author has used it in both one-shot instruction sessions, in credit information literacy courses to pre- and post-test students, and in formative assessments of students understanding of class content. She has also used it in faculty workshops as an ice-breaker activity and in orientation sessions as a means to interact with hundreds of freshmen at once. By embedding polls in Web pages, the author has asynchro-

nously collected students responses to a range of questions, including requests for suggestions for new tutorials and ideas for other resources to add to research guides.

c ritical evaluation
Perhaps the greatest strength of Poll Everywhere is that it does not require any special hardware or software but instead uses devices that people are already carryingmobile phonesand leverages the exploding trend of text messaging. Poll Everywhere aligns perfectly with the communication preferences of teens, for example. The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported in April 2010 that texting has become the preferred method of teens to communicate with one another and that 75 percent of teen cell phone users have unlimited text plans. Using Poll Everywhere with this population fits with these native behaviors and just makes sense: students are already paying for cell phones, they always carry them, and they do not need training on how to use them. Students regard specialty ARS handsets, on the other hand, as exceptional and burdens to remember and carry. These handsets also place a burden on instructors. Many academic libraries, for example, purchase and lend the handsets to students during workshops, but then spend valuable class time disseminating and collecting them (and worrying about them disappearing). Poll Everywhere does not present these problems. The audiences ability to participate in polls is dependent upon the classroom and network infrastructure. If cell phone reception or internet connectivity is poor, the experience will be negatively impacted (or completely disrupted). For example, if the internet connection goes down, the audience can still text in their votes and Poll Everywhere will receive them, but the presenter will be unable to display the results in real time. One really needs to know beforehand the challenges of the space in which she will be polling and have a back-up

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FIGURE 3 Live Poll with Editing, Response, and Publishing Controls

in PowerPoint. (But note, this does not work in OpenOffice or in Prezi). Polls can be also organized in an account for efficient retrieval and can be downloaded into a spreadsheet. Many classroom instructors use ARSs to test students learning. Traditional ARSs typically offer more robust features for supporting this kind of use. For example, some allow instructors to give different versions of the same test at the same time, to set start and finish times, and to analyze test data. Many handheld devices also have LCD displays that confirm responses have been received by the instructors computer. In its present version, Poll Everywhere does not have this range of capabilities, but the author sees no technical reason why future versions would not begin to incorporate more features like these. Text the Mob <http://textthemob.com/> and SMS Poll <http://www. smspoll.net/> are Poll Everywheres direct competition. They are both Web-based, cloud services that support SMS polling. They differ in their plans, pricing, and some features. For example, Text the Mobs free plan gives a user 3 questions and up to 50 responses, but displays ads on the screen, whereas Poll Everywheres free plan offers unlimited questions, 32 respondents per question, and no ads. SMS Poll does not support tweeting, but it does allow greater customization of the look of the polls. Poll Everywhere was the first to market, but now these other competitors are beginning to fill the space. It will be interesting to see what happens in this growing market.

plan handy, just-in-case. Of course, this is true when using any technology, and experienced presenters already plan for these scenarios. There is also the risk of the Poll Everywhere server going down, resulting in no votes being received at all. In two years of use, this author has not noticed any disruption in service. Typically a users vote will be displayed within two to five seconds of responding. Traditional ARSs are usually faster because their data transmission route is more direct. From a presenter and audience point of view, the differences are not so significant that the latency negatively impacts the experience. Poll Everywhere claims on its Web site that in about 30 seconds youll be creating text message and Web enabled polls. Indeed this author was able to open an account on the Web site with just three pieces of information and then configured and ran her first poll in five clicks and as fast as she was able to type the question and answers. This simplicity is one of the products best assets. Unlike conventional systems using dedicated hardware, Poll Everywhere is not confined to multiple-choice based polling. Instead, it leverages the full potential of the SMS format and, when so configured, allows respondents to reply in full free-text sentences. This is a unique feature of this technology. Allowing students to answer unconstrained in their own language can give an instructor valuable insight into how students are understanding and applying course concepts. A limitation of the free and lower-priced tiers of Poll Everywhere service is that respondents all share a common phone number to which they are sending SMS messages, so all possible polling responses registered on this number must be unique. This is necessary so that responses can be unambiguously tallied with their respective poll. The implication is that if any one active poll uses the responses yes and no, for example, then no other poll can use these responses. One might try to be clever and use yes1 and no1 instead, but this can quickly become tedious, nonintuitive, and error-prone. For this reason it may simply be easier to use number responses, as shown in Figure 2. If this is not acceptable, users can pay a premium to have a dedicated polling number. It is just as easy to manage a poll as it is to create one. All of the controls for editing, starting and stopping, publishing, and downloading are easily accessible on the screen through the Web-based interface (Figure 3). In one click the user can download a poll for embedding

c ontract provisions
Poll Everywhere claims no intellectual property rights over the material created by its users. A persons profile and materials uploaded remain his own property. Questions (but not results) are publicly searchable and available to be indexed unless a user disables this setting in the Settings tab.

a uthentication
The user logs into a Web-based account with a username and password. Internet access is required. Poll Everywhere is accessible through any browser.

r eferences
Bruff, Derek. Classroom Response System (Clickers) Bibliography. Vanderbilt UniversityCenter for Teaching. October 14, 2010. Accessed November 13, 2010. <http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/docs/classroom-response-system-clickers-bibliography/>. Kay, Robin H., and Ann LeSage. Examining the Benefits and Challenges of Using Audience Response Systems: A Review of the Literature. Computers and Education 53, no. 3 (2009): 81927. Accessed November 9, 2010. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.05.001.

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Poll Everywhere Review Scores Composite: HHHH

The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.

Content: User Interface/Searchability:

N/A
HHHHH

Poll Everywhere is a Web-based audience response system that supports texts, tweets, and Web votes. Setting up and managing an account is simple. Creating and launching polls is intuitive. Voting does not require use of proprietary devices; rather participants use their own mobile phones.

Pricing:

HHH

Price varies depending on size of audience and type of organization. Free versions are available for K12 and higher education, but responses are capped at 32 per question. Monthly or semester-long paid plans could work out to be more costly for an organization than a traditional audience response system. The minimum purchase is one month of service; if the service is needed for only one event, the account holder must remember to downgrade the plan after the event to avoid further billing.

Contract:

HHHH

Poll Everywhere explicitly claims no intellectual property rights over questions posted or information generated by users responses. Their default setting makes polling questions (but not results) public. Because questions and responses are in the cloud there is ultimately no guarantee of privacy. Corporate users should expect no better privacy guarantees than that of typical third-party e-mail service providers.

Lenhart, Amanda, Rich Ling, Scott Campbell, and Kristin Purcell. Teens and Mobile Phones. Pew Internet and American Life Project. April 20, 2010. Accessed November 10, 2010. <http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Teens-and-Mobile-Phones.aspx>. Tremblay, Eric A. Educating the Mobile Generation: Using Personal Cell Phones as Audience Response Systems in Post-Secondary Science Teaching. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching 29, no. 2 (2010): 21727. Accessed November 11, 2010. <http://www.editlib.org/p/32314>.

a bout the a uthor

m elanie Sellar is the Education Services Librarian at Marymount College in California. She holds a B.A. in linguistics from McMaster University, an M.A. in linguistics from the University of Ottawa, and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Western Ontario. Previous to her current position, Melanie was first the Community Outreach Librarian and later the e-Learning and Instructional Design Librarian at the University of California, Irvine. She also currently serves as the CoExecutive Director of Librarians Without Borders. n

c ontact information
Poll Everywhere
Phone: Email: URL: Twitter: (800) 388-2039 <sales@polleverywhere.com> <http://www.polleverywhere.com> <http://twitter.com/polleverywhere>