Item: Poll Everywhere
Rating: 9
Author: Emily Keener

Overall Satisfaction with Poll Everywhere

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We adopted Poll Everywhere institution-wide after it was used successfully by one of our schools. The need arose for a less expensive, device-agnostic audience polling device for student engagement and formative assessment - Poll Everywhere met that need. Faculty use Poll Everywhere in different ways, including to gauge readiness at the start of a class, to see where concepts might need clarified, and to engage students in discussion and class decision making.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Stellar customer service/tech support
User-friendly question creation (just a few clicks)
Consistently making improvements based on user feedback
Offers pretty robust free version that we can share with our teachers in training

Cons

SSO integration could be a little smoother
LMS grade integration requires many steps, sometimes frustrates faculty
New quiz/gaming feature is still not as good as Kahoot - some technical issues in presentations

Return on Investment

We were facing an unplanned $20k yearly expense if we had stayed with our previous clicker provider
Poll Everywhere made it so we did not have to increase student fees or find another way to fund the initiative; we had enough in current fees to cover the usage
In pilots, students preferred using Poll Everywhere to clickers

Alternatives Considered

Turning Technologies - has its own clicker or has a mobile option, good support
iClicker - has its own clicker or has a mobile option, clunkier for faculty to use
Pearson's Learning Catalytics - has phenomenal analytics, can be used outside of Pearson, no clicker option
In the end, Poll Everywhere provides excellent support and offers competitive pricing

Other Software Used

Articulate Storyline, Zoom, Qualtrics, Blackboard, VEGAS Pro

Likelihood to Recommend

Poll Everywhere might be a good fit for institutions that have historically relied on "clicker" devices, but are now faced with financial and administrative challenges as clicker companies move to cloud/subscription-based services. Poll Everywhere helped us out of a bind by offering a less expensive alternative and allowing us to rely on the devices most students already have in hand. We also collaborated with Poll Everywhere on usage ideas for users who do not own mobile devices; they helped us consider how we might use other university technology and methods to ensure no student misses out, regardless of what device they own.

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Poll Everywhere Leverages Existing Tech, Saves Money