Surveying the Landscape

For the longest time, it seemed like Survey Monkey was THE go to tool for surveying a large number of people. It doesn’t really lend itself to live polling, nor is it particularly student (child) friendly- not ideally suited to the classroom. I’ve found live polling to be particularly popular with counselors and pastoral leaders when working with large groups of students and parents- getting their immediate input and feedback and providing discussion points, it allows them to very quickly take the temperature of the room. This was the request I received from one of my own counselors and there were 3 options that I felt met his needs, which included a need to survey more than 50 people and get immediate feedback:

• Microsoft Forms as an office 365 school, this is an obvious option (Google Forms work too if that’s what you’ve got:
  
  • Pros: supports a range of question types, can insert images, all students have access, no upper limit on participants, results presented graphically or as long form responses, responses can be anonymous
    
  • Cons: Participants have to answer all questions before you can really dig in to responses
    

Forms were very popular at one of my previous schools when counselors were leading Digital Citizenship sessions. The first session would include the completion of a survey and the next session would involve digging in to, and discussing, the results.

• Mentimeter:
  
  • Pros: has a free version, supports a range of question types, responses can be anonymous, responses can be viewed immediately
    
  • Cons: free version only supports a couple of questions and 40 participants
    

I currently have a free Mentimeter account- it allows me unlimited responses, and has a variety of question types but because the account is free, I can ask only 2 questions. I reached out to Mentimeter, based in Sweden, and was very impressed with the quality of response and service. Their campus license covers anyone with a domain email address and they also offer a short term, pro-rated pilot license for 3 or 6 months allowing schools to properly evaluate the product and decide if they want to make a more significant (financial) commitment. 

• Kahoot!:
  
  • Pros: free, unlimited participants, students are familiar with the tool, it has a survey feature, can add media to the questions, results can be viewed immediately after a question, as creator you will be able to download a report of student responses for viewing afterwards
    
  • Cons: students have been known to 'bot' the game, resulting in 3000 responses to a 15 person survey/ quiz, students have to enter some sort of username, the interface is very game/ play based so it may not lend itself to a thoughtful, reflective engagement with the topic, questions have to be multiple choice based
    

I have very mixed feelings about Kahoot! I can appreciate that there is much to love but I fear it has become overused in classrooms in a way that is substitutive- we’re doing multiple choice quizzes that could also be completed with a whiteboard and expo marker ‘Show Me’ style, so Kahoot! Isn’t necessarily adding value. It needs us to give greater thought to what evidence of learning we’re looking for, and how we’re using the analytic information that we get after a quiz is completed. Stephanie Castle gave a great talk with Kahoot! Around use of the tool to encourage students to self evaluate and to aid in the pacing and introduction of new content- a Blind Kahoot! Learn more by watching the video introduction on Youtube.

Update: September 13, 2018

Well no sooner had I made my comments about my love/ hate relationship with Kahoot! and student fascination with botting the games, than an article came across my Twitter feed talking about exactly that thing! Read the article over at Buzzfeed (which has suddenly taken on a very broadsheet look!)