PollEverywhere Case Study 1

Use of Polleverywhere by Carmen van den Berg

Participant Group Profiles
 
A range of sessions were held using PollEverywhere.  The session sizes varied from 13-75 (year 1 C21 students and year 3 BSc Science and Intercalated students), and were tried out in a range of locations; some with Wifi only and no phone signal, some with phone signal and WiFi and some with neither.  A range of question types were also used, mainly MCQs but open ended questions were also asking in certain qroups. C21 students were informed prior to the sessions to have their phones connected to eduroam



Used as follows:

• Through powerpoint embedded polls run from my laptop.
• Students asked to submit answers/questions via smart phone/tablet/computer after pushing questions to these devices.

Instructions to participants

• Using smartphone/tablet etc: m.pollev.com/CarmenCU Send answer  (NB: CarmenCU is my own pollev.com page)
• Using smartphone when m.pollev.com doesn't work:  www.polleverywhere.com/CarmenCU
• Using text message: text: poll number + answer to indicated telephone number

Connecting devices

Technologies that worked well: Ipad, Samsung smart phone, IPhone, laptop
Technologies that did not work too well: Nokia Lumia 710 windows phone: needed to use whole web address and needed sometimes to refresh screen to get to next question

User Recommendations:

• Ensure that all seminar rooms at Heath Hospital have good eduroam Wifi connection
• Ensure that students know how to connect to eduroam
• For embedding polls into powerpoint a Polleverywhere app needs to be installed on the computer used.  Use of own laptop is recommended as this app cannot be installed on computers in seminar rooms . It is possible to run polls directly from the polleverywhere site through the workstation connected to the internet, but powerpoint embedded polls are easier to use.
• MCQ: works best as answers come in quicker and students’ response rate is higher. Is easier to use by students and also less technical issues
• open ended questions: not suitable if you want to have a discussion as it takes too long to get answers to open ended questions or students still not willing to participate.
• open ended questions : suitable for an 'ask the expert session', when questions can come in from the audience over the course of the session.
• moderator option: when using polls through powerpoint, use a separate tablet/smart phone to moderate and select the questions/answers to be projected on screen

Would I use it again?

Yes in following settings:

• MCQ quiz at start, middle or end of lecture
• open questions/answers from students in workshops: where student (groups) can submit their answers over a short period of time (e.g.5 min) after which they will be discussed.

No in the following settings:

• for quick interactivities during lecture at regular intervals
• for open ended questions where quick responses are required

Feel free to contact me with queries or if you want a demo.

Carmen (vandenbergcw@cardiff.ac.uk)

If you would like further information about registering or using PollEverywhere including obtaining access to the University license that allows for 330 responses per poll then please contact the MEDIC E-Learning Team (medic-elearning@cardiff.ac.uk)

Get started with PollEverywhere!

Would you like to make your teaching sessions more interactive? We now have a license for PollEverywhere software which you can use to ask questions and get responses from  groups of students of any size. You might already be familiar with ‘clickers’ but with PollEverywhere students will use their own mobile phone, tablet or laptop, and you have much more choice in the type of question you can easily ask.

Next Wednesday (27/11/13) at 1pm we will run a training session in which we will show you how quickly you can start using this software and how easy it will be to integrate it into your teaching.

Please bring your laptop (that you have admin rights on and that has internet connection eg Eduroam) and we will get you started in 50 minutes.

The session will be in Room 0.15 Cochrane building. Please sign up here to let us know you are coming or if you would like to know more.

Lecture Capture in the Michael Griffiths Lecture Theatre

What is lecture capture? 

Lecture capture is the recording of a face-to-face  classroom activity for review at a later stage. The most benefit comes from having audio of the lecturer along with the slides or presentation material that is shown to students. Video of the lecturer often does not produce any additional benefit over audio alone so the choice is up to the lecturer. There is no university wide solution for lecture capture at present. However, students are increasingly asking for this facility so the centrally the university is considering options

What is Echo 360?

In the Michael Griffiths Lecture theatre we have access to ‘Echo 360’. When programmed this software will automatically record audio (and if wanted video) for a teaching session. Afterwards the lecture can be viewed online using the Echo 360 software directly within Learning Central. Or a file can be downloaded and then placed on the Cardiff Player video-streaming service. The advantage of viewing the lecture through the Echo 360 software is that it is easy to get to a particular slide in a presentation and hear the audio (or see the video) associated with that slide, whereas in Cardiff Player it will display as one continual video that needs to be manually skipped through by trial and error to get to a particular slide. 

As a lecturer what do I have to do?

We will email you in advance of your lecture in the Michael Griffiths lecture theatre to remind you that your session will be audio-recorded. If you would also like video to be recorded please ask for this be reply. If you do not want any recording to be made please reply to say so.

When you come to the Michael Griffith Lecture theatre you teach as you usually do. You don't have to do anything extra because of Echo 360. The recording will stop and start automatically and there will be no indication that it is happening in the room. 

Do students want this?

We do not know if students will access the lectures afterwards, or if they will find it valuable. We will track statistics on usage and we will evaluate whether it is worthwhile to keep on using this service.If there is very high uptake then it may be justified to set up similar arrangements in the other lecture theatres we use.

Copyright

Some people are concerned that they may not have permission for the images that they use in lecture slides to be stored in a 'lecture capture' format. It is very likely that if you have permission to scan the image to use in a presentation then you also have permission for storing that in a secure environment which only our students and staff have access to such as Learning Central, and Echo 360.

If you have any other questions please contact Dr Anne Marie Cunningham, lead for eLearning.