Information on Best Practices of Polling Questions in Teaching!!
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FAQ website - Step-by-Step Instructions on Poll Everywhere
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Best Practices in Teaching and Learning
Student Response System (Poll Everywhere) and Academic Integrity
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Best Practices in Teaching and Learning
- Provide a reason for using pollling questions
- Always provide a learning goal as part of the assessment
- Align challenging and important questions to the student learning outcomes within your class
- Allow for peer discussion and active learning
- Breakup your questions throughout your course delivery
- Provide sufficient time for discourse and responses
- Emphasize the value of respecting ideas and other reasonings - respect
- Through the use of polling responses, you are gathering attendance data
- Start with a low-stake poll or current knowledge question
- Reduce the showing of the histograms
- Remove the use of "trick" questions
- Use real-life scanerios/case studies/everyday examples within your questions
- Utilize group responses for think, pair, and share exercises
- Based on responses do re-polling if responses are widely incorrect
Attendance and Responses
By using polling questions in your class, you will be able to challenge students through:
- Understanding the content through active learning
- Seeing the purpose and flow of the content
- Increase in participation, discussion with their peers
- Consistent attendance
- Assessing their content knowledge
- Meaningful faculty-to-student interaction
- Greater student-to-student interaction
- Deeper student-to-content interaction
- Fcaulty feedback (understanding the knowledge transfer)
- Problem practice and development
- Opportunities for anonymous responses
- Removal of musconceptions of content
- Think, Pair, Share responses (peer instructions)
Student Response System (Poll Everywhere) and Academic Integrity
“Academic honesty and integrity are essential to the existence and growth of an academic community. Without maintenance of high standards of honesty, members of the instructional faculty are defrauded, students are unfairly treated, and society itself is poorly served. Maintaining the academic standards of honesty and integrity is ultimately the formal responsibility of the instructional faculty; and this responsibility is shared by all members of the academic community.” (University Policy 407, Code of Student Academic Integrity)
Any student found improperly using "student response system" (Poll Everywhere) in the classroom is violating UNC Charlotte’s Code of Student Academic Integrity in their improper use of “student response system” (Poll Everywhere) in the classroom. These violations include, but are not limited to, the following examples:
- Using a classmates mobile device or account for quizzes, assignments, homework, or attendance
- Using a classmates mobile device, their account, or your account to register for attendance without being present in the classroom
- Using your mobile device and account for attendance and immediately leaving the classroom for the remainder of the class session
- Not being physically present in the classroom, but answering the questions through collusion with another student who is physically present in the classroom
- Providing Poll Everywhere answers to students (via Text, Email, Chat, or Phone) who are not physically present in the classroom
According to the Code of Student Academic Integrity, the aforementioned examples are classified as:
- Cheating. Intentionally using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information, notes, study aids or other devices in any academic exercise. This definition includes unauthorized communication of information during an academic exercise.
- Complicity in Academic Dishonesty. Intentionally or knowingly helping or attempting to help another to commit an act of academic dishonesty.
If it is discovered that students have engaged in such practices, the following penalties according to The Code of Student Academic Integrity may be imposed:
- a formal warning,
- a reduced grade (including "F" if undergraduate student and "U" for graduate student) for the assignment,
- a reduced grade (including "F" if undergraduate student and "U" for graduate student) for the entire course.
The faculty member may combine any of the above examples, depending on the severity of the infraction, or impose some other penalty appropriate to the violation. However, the maximum penalty that a faculty member may assign using the settlement form is an “F” for an undergraduate and a “U” for a graduate student.
Developed by Roy Fielding and Bret Wood, Department of Kinesiology, UNC Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223
Research Articles
- Batchelor, J. (2015). Effects of Clicker Use on Calculus Students’ Mathematics Anxiety. PRIMUS 25:5, 453-472.
- Briggs, C., & Keyek-Franssen, D. (2010). CATs with clickers: Using learner response systems for formative assessments in the Classroom. Presented at the 2010 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Conference, Austin, Texas.
- Bruff, D. (2010). Multiple-choice questions you wouldn’t put on a test: Promoting deep learning using clickers. Essays on Teaching Excellence, 21(3).
- Caldwell, J.E. (2007). Clickers in the large classroom: current research and best-practice tips. CBE Life Sci Educ. 2007 Spring;6(1):9-20.
- Campbell, C., & Monk, S. (2015). Introducing a learner response system to pre-service education students: Increasing student engagement. Active Learning in Higher Education. 16:1, 25-36.
- De Gagne, J. (2011). The impact of clickers in nursing education: A review of literature. Nurse Education Today, 31(8), e34-e40.
- Gauci, S.A., Dantas, A.M., Williams, D.A., & Kemm, R.E. (2009). Promoting student-centered active learning in lectures with a personal response system. Adv Physiol Educ. 2009 Mar; 33(1):60-71.
- Hoyt, A. et al. (2010). An audience response system may influence student performance on anatomy examination questions. Anat Sci Educ. 2010 Nov-Dec; 3(6):295-9. Epub 2010 Oct 1.
- Kolikant, Y. B., Drane, D, & Calkins, S. (2010). "Clickers" as catalysts for transformation of teachers. Journal of College Teaching, 58(4), 127-135, DOI: 10.1080/87567551003774894
- McClean, S., & Crowe, W. (2017). Making room for interactivity: using the cloud-based audience response system Nearpod to enhance engagement in lectures. FEMS Microbiol Lett 2017; 364 (6): fnx052. doi: 10.1093/femsle/fnx052
- Middleditch, P., Moindrot, W., & Elliott, C. (2015). Using classroom response systems for creative interaction and engagement with students. Cogent Economics & Finance, 3(1), 1119368. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2015.1119368
- Monk, S., Campbell, C., & Smala, S. (2013). Aligning pedagogy and technology: A case study using clickers in a first-year university education course. International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, 8, 229-241.
- Morrell, L.J., & Joyce, D.A. (2015). Interactive lectures: Clickers or personal devices? F1000Res. 2015 Mar 12;4:64. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.6207.1. eCollection 2015.
- Shaffer, D.M., & Collura, M.J. (2009). Evaluating the effectiveness of a personal response system in the classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 36(4), 273-277.
- Sutherlin, A.L., Sutherlin, G. R., & Akpanudo, U.M. (2013). The Effect of Clickers in University Science Courses. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 22, 651-666.
- Tremblay, E. (2010). 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(2), 217-227.
- Voelkel, S., & Bennett, D. (2014). New uses for a familiar technology: Introducing mobile phone polling in large classes. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 51(1), 46-58.
- Bibliography from Vanderbilt Univesrity