Engage Your Students With Exciting Polling Tools-Here's How!
20th January 2023
Student engagement is one of the key factors that can determine a student’s learning. And since there are many polling tools available across the internet, selecting the best ones for yourself can be tricky. While there are many factors to consider like pricing, features, compatibility, ease of use, etc, understanding what real-time student polling is and how to use these tools is foundational.
To ease your pain, we here have a breakdown of everything you need to know, take a look.
What Is Classroom Polling?
Classroom polling is a way of collecting student responses and can also be used as a form of assessment where student answers various questions proposed by a teacher in real time. Rather than waiting for the responses to be collected and calculated by hand, it is easy to use tools right away. Not only does this eliminates human error but also promotes trust.
Polling can be a powerful way to engage students, improve learning, test subject knowledge and above all bring life back to the classroom.
The Benefits Of Classroom Polling?
There are several benefits of using classroom polling, this includes:
- Comprehension checking can be done by asking a question and having the students vote on the right answer. With this, you can quickly gauge whether or not they have understood the materials.
- Classroom polls can make lectures more interactive while holding students' attention for a long.
- You can customize your classes or teaching methodologies depending on the results of the poll.
- Polls can be a great way to break the monotony and make learning more enjoyable by adding some friendly competition.
- Pooling can spar discussions and boost the effectiveness of the learners by allowing them to think critically and share their thoughts and insights.
Tools To Conduct Classroom Poll
Given below are a few tools to boost student engagement and make learning fun:
- ElectionBuddy
Source: electionbuddy.com
This is a complete package that allows you to vote from multiple mediums like computers, tablets, cellphones, etc. This basically means that no student will be excluded from the fun due to a lack of technology. Additionally, these polls can be customized using photos, websites, and documents thus making polling interesting.
One good thing about this tool is that you can create your polls in multiple languages and hence every student can participate regardless of the preferred language. Lastly, you will also get a live reporting feature that will allow you to see the results in real-time and adjust your lessons.
- Poll Everywhere
Source: polleverywhere.com
This is a widely used tool as this is compatible with almost all LMSs used by organizations. It's easy to use and provides various features like creating custom pools, sharing results in real time, and exporting these results for future analysis.
- Socrative
Source: socrative.com
This is another popular tool used for classroom polling. This tool allows you to poll at least 50 students at once and offers shareable links to make the polls more accessible to the students. Furthermore, you can also launch up twenty quizzes at a time.
How To Conduct Polling Successfully
Here are 5 ways to create high-quality classroom polls:
- Keep It Short
While giving questions to your students make sure it is short, sweet, and to the point. This will prevent students from finding themselves confused or getting lost.
- Make It Relevant
When you ask a question, it should be relevant to the topic you are currently teaching in class. This will allow the students to see the value of participating in the poll.
- Make It Engaging
Make the questions interesting and fun to keep your students engaged. Add videos or images to the questions to make them personal and appealing.
- Be Prepared
Come prepared to class before conducting the poll. Have a look if you have the necessary technology and materials required to conduct the poll and have a clear plan on how you are getting started.
- Follow Up
Take some time to discuss the results once the poll is completed. This will help the students think critically and share their insights. This in turn will help you understand how impactful your lectures were and where you need to improve.
Make Learning Fun!
Live polling is a great way to integrate the lost fun and interest in the classroom. And now that you have all the knowledge you need it's high time to use them in your classroom. However, if you are just beginning your teaching journey then you might want to consider pursuing teacher training courses to elevate your teaching style and methodologies.
Leave a comment!
If you are looking for earning a teacher training certificate then contact us at +6621055721 or send an email to act@asiancollegeofteachers.com. Happy Teaching!
Written By : Ruchi Mehta
