Are you concerned that students aren’t completing the reading before class? Are you wondering how to break the silence when you ask students if there are any questions? Do you suspect that students don’t fully understand the concepts and skills practiced that day in class? Polling is a powerful instructional tool to help overcome these challenges. They guarantee that each student is actively participating in the class and its content, which can be hard to detect in large and small classrooms alike. Polls can also be an avenue for class discussions, low-stakes assessment, and feedback opportunities.
This post explores the pedagogy and techniques needed to successfully engage students with polls. Duke subscribes to Wooclap, a polling tool that can be used in Canvas or independently at no cost which has 20 different question types (including fill-in-the blank, image labeling, find a number, and sorting). Plus, you are able to deliver the polls anonymously or track student responses for points toward their grades.
Knowledge Checks Reveal What Your Students Understand
Polls can help you understand whether your students have mastered the knowledge and skills needed to be successful. The poll results help you tailor your teaching and provide students with immediate feedback about their own learning. Starting your class with a poll about readings or problem sets is a powerful way to encourage homework completion (especially if you award some points toward their grades). You can also launch a poll to break up or complete a lecture for students to work on with partner(s) or alone to check if they are able to apply the knowledge.
It is key to respond to the poll results at that moment for learning gains. The way you approach the discussion depends on the course content and level of understanding displayed in their answers. If there is a wide difference of opinions, the students could pair up to discuss their answers and then vote again to see if consensus is found. You might give a mini-lecture or explain a difficult concept. Students could volunteer to explain the correct (or incorrect) answer. To use these knowledge checks successfully, it is best to hide the answers until all students have voted and then reveal them to the class. There are a number of question types in Wooclap that you might take advantage of depending on the content, including multiple choice, short answers, find a number, matching, or label an image.
Competitions Spark Interest and Engagement
You can require students to share their names or work as a team and enable competition mode in Wooclap. In teams, students must discuss their answers before voting, adding another dimension to their participation. Competitive polls work best for discrete answers that can be identified quickly, such as distinguishing concepts, providing key facts or formulas, identifying the next step, definitions, dates or vocabulary. Try to provide answer options that are plausible to increase discussion.
Competitions can be especially effective as exam preparation or cumulative review. You can add a timer to inspire more robust participation, choose when the leaderboard is displayed, and decide how many places to reveal. However, to reduce stress be sure the competition is low-stakes and focused on improvement, not embarrassment.
Specialized Settings Allow Students to Ask for Help
Wooclap offers several ways for students to anonymously report they are confused about a topic or ask questions. There is an option to indicate that they are confused about a specific question as they are voting. A message wall can also be added to a poll, which allows students to ask questions for clarification of the polling results or it can be kept open for them to ask questions during lecture. With the addition of the anonymous questions, you’ll get a better understanding of students’ pain points and misconceptions before graded work and improve their learning overall.
Brainstorming and Discussions Become Easier
Wooclap offers question types and settings to allow students to provide their opinion on topics or brainstorm ideas more easily than a standard open discussion in class. Along with polls, multiple choice and word cloud questions, answers can be supplemented with student comments to explain their answers for more clarity and nuance. Short answers can be upvoted to get a sense of the class’ general thinking on a topic. To start conversations about the relative merit of ideas, instructors can create SWOT frameworks, ratings, or prioritization questions.
Resources
- Get Started with Wooclap: Instructions for using Wooclap independently, in Google Slides and PowerPoint, plus adding it to Canvas for automatic grading integration.
- Active Learning with Wooclap: CTL post with more information about various question types and their pedagogical uses.
- Wooclap Templates: Explore existing examples to get inspiration for your own polls
