This has always been a far-off dream for us and I 100% understand the desire to limit responses to only participants within the room. We have been waiting and hoping for GeoTracking technology to be reliable enough for us to use as part of our regular workflow. I have personally used Uber or enough times where they have me one or more city blocks away from my actual location and we really don’t want the same situation to prevent a student from getting any class credit.
That said, there are a few ways we could try to tackle the problem. Would something like this work for you?
- you are able to set you poll questions to “Request the participants location” before they are able to respond
- the student is then prompted to share their location on the phone/laptop
- if Poll Everywhere is unable to determine the location of the student for some reason (they do not have GPS enabled on their device) or if Poll Everywhere determines they are far away from the classroom
- then, we display a notification to the student "Warning: Your phone thinks it’s far from other participants. If that’s not right "
- the student is then given some other means to prove they are in the classroom. Or, at least knows they are considered outside the room
- after class, when you run a Gradebook report > there will be a new column that will mark whether we believed the student was in the room or not. And, you will be able to followup or reject those responses at will
Sorry, I know that’s a lot but it’s a tricky problem for us from a technology perspective and a privacy perspective. I’d love to hear any ideas or thoughts you have on it.
Thanks for the idea!
This has always been a far-off dream for us and I 100% understand the desire to limit responses to only participants within the room. We have been waiting and hoping for GeoTracking technology to be reliable enough for us to use as part of our regular workflow. I have personally used Uber or enough times where they have me one or more city blocks away from my actual location and we really don’t want the same situation to prevent a student from getting any class credit.
That said, there are a few ways we could try to tackle the problem. Would something like this work for you?
- you are able to set you poll questions to “Request the participants location” before they are able to respond
- the student is then prompted to share their location on the phone/laptop
- if Poll Everywhere is unable to determine the location…
I totally understand it's a difficult problem. There are some ways that I've found to get around it by doing variations in class but they take time and are demeaning to the students if done repeatedly (like make them all raise their hands in the air 2 min after the poll opens. Anyone answering within those two minutes is not in class).
I think the solution you propose is reasonable. It would be interesting to see it work in practice and how the students feel about it.
Christina Lebonville
I totally understand it's a difficult problem. There are some ways that I've found to get around it by doing variations in class but they take time and are demeaning to the students if done repeatedly (like make them all raise their hands in the air 2 min after the poll opens. Anyone answering within those two minutes is not in class).
I think the solution you propose is reasonable. It would be interesting to see it work in practice and how the students feel about it.