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Use Instant Voting in the classroom

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Use Instant Voting in the classroom

Owned by Sonja Grussendorf
Last updated: Sept 16, 2024 by Eden Digital Education Team
8 min read

The PointSolutions system will be unavailable from the 30 September 2024. This will be replaced by Mentimeter which will be the School’s centrally supported live polling system going forward. More information on this is available on the LSE Mentimeter information page.

If you will require support with transferring existing content into Mentimeter, please get in touch with the Digital Education Team by contacting eden.digital@lse.ac.uk

What is ‘instant voting’?

Interactive Polling software is an umbrella term for software systems that allow teachers/ presenters to ask various question types that students/participants can answer digitally via web enabled devices (smartphone, laptop, tablet). Questions can be asked on the fly, pre-written, synchronously and asynchronously and answers can be given anonymously or allow IDs to be displayed. 

Instant voting systems come into their own in large classrooms where class-wide discussions or Q&A style sessions are often impossible. Used creatively, they can be used to promote and enable creative and engaging teaching. In small classroom contexts, they can effectively be used to gamify lessons, or survey opinions on the fly.

  • Quick polls break up the monotony of one-way lectures (and gives teachers a break from speaking)

  • Anonymity can put students at ease – the fear of being seen not to know or have understood something is eliminated, students are safe to express opinions, political and social preferences under discussion without admitting to it personally

  • Diagnostic use allows teachers to gauge cohorts initial level of knowledge and progressive understanding

  • It allows teachers to use the so-called “Socratic" teaching method, progressing students’ understanding through questioning their preconceptions, reacting flexibly to their answers and thus progressing to a fuller understanding as a whole

  • Instant voting systems can be used creatively, eg get students to react and interact with each other, to contribute to active learning and increased classroom engagement

  • Teachers can collect post-session feedback to review their content, identify problem areas and track student progression

“Instant Voting” has a multinomial history, including different abbreviations:

  • CRS (Classroom Response System) PRS (Personal Response System); EVS (Electronic Voting System); interactive polls online; instant polling and ‘clickers’.

  • At the LSE, we introduced a system by turningtechnologies in 2009, called TurningPoint, which ‘helpfully’ changed its name 3 years later to ResponseWare, then back to TurningPoint and now to ttpoll. It still works in the same way. The company is now called turning (or is it?).

How does it work?

Teachers create interactive polling question slides in PowerPoint using the TurningPoint plugin.  Students answer using their own devices that allow them to go online (smartphone, tablets, laptops). The results are automatically entered into the same slide after students have answered. Teachers and students can then review and discuss the results.

Step 1: Setting up Basics

To get an instructor account, please contact eden.digital@lse.ac.uk with your LSE email. We will send you an invitation (check your junk mail, just in case, because it comes from turningtechnologies).

Once you have followed the email instructions to create your account, let eden.digital know how many participants you expect so we can allocate you that number. If you do not get an allocation you will not be able to ask your students to join anonymously.

 

On your work computer:
TurningPoint works as a plugin for PowerPoint. To get the plugin installed on your office computer (PC), search for the LSE Self Service software download centre and download TurningPoint from there.

On your own computer:
To download the software onto your private computer (home, or laptop), sign in to the instructor account (https://instructor.turningtechnologies.eu/#/downloads). At the top there is a download icon, from which you can download the software.

The system is installed on teaching computers on campus. If you encounter any problems with the installation of the software, please contact the IT helpdesk (ext. 5000)

 

Step 2: Creating questions

Open the downloaded app.

The dashboard will give you the option to poll, to create content in Powerpoint or directly in TurningPoint.

Use TurningPoint with PowerPoint.

Sign In with your LSE email and your TurningPoint passport

 

Click on the PowerPoint Polling column, which will automatically open PowerPoint with TurningPoint integrated as a menu (= plugin). You can then create interactive slides from this menu.

Create your interactive question slides by clicking on New and choosing a question type (e.g. multiple choice). Then simply put the question into the title and add answers into the text box.

Save your presentation.

Step by step guides and video tutorials are also available on https://echo360.com/videos/ (select either Point Solutions Class Mac or Point Solutions Classic PC, depending on your device).

 

Once you have finished creating your slides click on the refresh button, to make them appear properly.

Step 3: Running your presentation

 

Open TurningPoint. Login with your instructor account details (LSE email and whichever password you chose when you created it). Once open, choose PowerPoint Polling. Go to File and find your PowerPoint.

Before live polling

Refresh the slides


Reset all slides.

 

When all the charts are “flat”, i.e. no bars are showing you are ready to go live.

Enable mobile responses:

(Click on Mobile responses - if it is green, your session is live).

Session ID

Students need a session ID (like a room number) to join your polls. This can be reserved beforehand (we recommend using your course code, eg DV123, but you can also choose something more personal like KittenPollsLSE, which you can use for any session).

Click on reserve, enter a name, save. It will appear in the session ID dropdown. If you don’t do this, TP will choose a random number for every session you start.

 

 

 

We recommend you do NOT require participants accounts, to maintain anonymity, although you can (the software is GDPR compliant). If you do, please tell your students.

Untick require participant accounts. Ideally don’t require names, though this is up to you. Messaging is a useful thing, as it acts like a chat during the session.

Save.

Go Live

Click on start session. Make sure you tell your students the Session ID so that they can join your poll.

You can then close this pop up screen (not “end session”). Your session remains “live” until you logout again or log off the computer. Participants can join by typing responseware.eu or ttpoll.eu into a browser on any sort of device using a browser. Poll questions will show on their device as they appear in the presentation.

Start your PowerPoint presentation (the screen icon or F5). When you come to a question slide, the showbar will be on the screen. In zoom, this will not be shown to participants. It is where YOU control the slides. When the poll is open, the right hand side will be green. When you close the poll, so that no more answers can be submitted, it will be red.

How do students participate?

Students can use any web browser (= smartphone, tablet, laptop) to participate by going to ttpoll.eu which should take them to https://student.turningtechnologies.eu where they can enter the Session ID to join your poll.

 

Students may be asked or shown a screen to enter profile information, but they can leave it blank and choose JOIN SESSION without entering anything. This can be prevented from appearing by the presenter in settings (see above).

Make sure you run through your TurninPoint presentation ahead of your teaching so you are familar with the process. If you have any queries contact eden.digital@lse.ac.uk

Some reading

Derek Bruff’s blog. This blog accompanies a book called “teaching with classroom response systems”, a comprehensive guide about using instant voting systems in education.

Bruff, D. (2009). Teaching with classroom response systems: Creating active learning environments. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mazur, E. (1997). Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual, Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-565441-6
http://ericmazur.com/ has lots of useful resources on his website

https://teach.com/blog/teaching-question-writing/

These pages are created by the LSE Digital Education Team and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License CC BY-SA 4.0