Kevin Gonzales has taught MATH 106, a high-enrollment course with approximately 150 students per section, for the past seven years. During that time, he has experimented with a variety of tools to engage students, including clickers, QR codes linked to Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, and Canvas submissions. One persistent challenge across these methods has been that students who were not physically present in class were still able to complete the engagement activities.
Last semester, Gonzales implemented the Nebraska Polling App to support active learning strategies such as “think-pair-share” in addition to individually answered clicker questions. Using an instructor-led approach, he embeds the question text directly into his lecture slides along with an access code. When students open the poll, they see only the answer choices (A, B, C, D), rather than the full question. As a result, Gonzales is confident that — with rare exceptions — students who submit responses are physically present in the classroom. Consequently, he uses polling responses to track attendance.
Students who are absent may contact Gonzales to request access to the recorded lecture and are provided with a make-up activity in place of the polling questions. Student feedback on this approach has been overwhelmingly positive. In course evaluations shared by Gonzales, students commented: “having students discuss a problem is very helpful,” “talking with the people around me during class greatly improves my understanding of the subjects that we are learning — we can help each other when someone is feeling confused,” and “having time in class to try the problems before we go over them was very beneficial.”
While there are other polling and student response apps in use across campus, the Nebraska Polling App is the only one that is completely free of charge for both instructors and students to use all its features (See comparison matrix video). The app offers a wide array of question formats and ways to visualize the resultant data. Results can be exported as a Canvas assignment and imported to the course for results to be included in the gradebook.
Students may respond to polls using a web browser or through the app, which is available in the Android and Apple app stores.
To learn more about how to use the Nebraska Polling App, view the recorded training session from the Academic Technologies Learning Series. To quickly see a demo, jump to minute 23. To try the app, visit polling.unl.edu and log in using your UNL credentials.
If you would like assistance integrating this tool into your teaching, contact an instructional designer assigned to your college.
More details at: https://polling.unl.edu/