Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Angela Shapiro and Aidan Johnston
Figure 3 illustrates an example of results from a sample poll using Poll Everywhere. Students were
shown a vidcast as part of their lecture and then asked questions to test their understanding about
conventions of academic writing. However each group of students revealed an unforeseen result in
that students preferred to either vocalise their thoughts, or put their hand up rather than using their
mobile. This may have been for several reasons; firstly, students had to use a long number to send
their results back (Figure 3) and secondly, some students were concerned that responding would
incur cost (despite the fact that most had call plans with free texts). The lecturer took time to become
familiar with using Poll Everywhere and in the initial polls students could guess the correct answer as
the results were revealed as student responses were sent. In the later polls, the lecturer learnt to hide
the results so they did not appear instantaneously. Despite these challenges, students enjoyed the
interaction; however, as this took place very quickly after the learning experience, there was no time
for reflection by the learner.
Response
options
Poll question
Response
methods:
SMS, Twitter
or Web
Respons
e results
Figure 3: Sample student response using Poll Everywhere
Following this, we distributed a brief questionnaire requesting comments from selected staff and
students in the school of BNE. To date, although we know the vidcasts are being used regularly,
based on Google analytics web tracking (1583 people accessed the vidcasts in 2010), only a handful
of BNE staff and students have responded to the email. However anecdotal feedback has been
heartening with users stating that they found the vidcasts easy to follow and liked the fact they had
the option of being able to navigate through the chapters. The issue of survey fatigue has been
suggested in studies, with respondents in these studies stating that reasons for non completion
included: too many surveys, lack of time and that many of the surveys appear to be irrelevant (Porter
et al., 2005). Other research highlighted that the culture of the department may affect the level of
responses in conjunction with the personality and attributes of the respondent (Porter & Whitcomb,
2005).
8. Conclusion
The results indicated that students liked to respond using their mobile phones, but some were
unwilling to engage with the feedback process, either because of security or cost, although
interestingly students were happy to respond by putting their ‘hands up’ when asked the same
questions that were on the Poll Everywhere slide. This suggested to us that students do not feel
uncomfortable responding in front of their peers. However, it is acknowledged that this approach of
feedback does not allow time for reflection. Additionally, Clouder (1998) suggests that ‘… students are
not all at similar cognitive levels; therefore their evaluations can only be a product of their
expectations for their level of cognitive development.’ Indeed in a study by Arthur (2009) it was noted
that some lecturers believed that they are the professionals and thus they are the only ones who are
sufficiently competent to evaluate lecturers’ work. We would disagree but recognise that care needs
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