Polling

Advantages (according to my fellow TechTool students):

1. Asynchronous communication using polls or texting is an efficient and quick, low commitment method for short evaluations.
2. Response rates are usually very high because students feel valued because their opinion is considered (especially when the poll is anonymous)
3. Great way to check if the difficulty levels or expectations after an assignment or tests were not met or exceeded.

Pitfalls:

1. Technology breaks down, which lessens the student's positive experience in the course.
2. Texting involves costs.

For the TechTools course we used:

Polleverywhere.com. It was a positive experience for me. I was able to text my response to the question (which was posted with the number to text to and the numbers corresponding to the different possible answers on the course website) via my iPhone. (I also had the option of going to the website and clicking on the response there). When I visited the website I found that creating my own poll was very straight forward.

Polldaddy.com is preferred by one of my fellow students because "you can send the link directly to students in an email or embed it in BlackBoard. Its free with easy signup and poll links are not public, ensuring student privacy." (It does not involve smartphones, which some students may not have anyway - which would leave them out of the process).