Mapping a Discussion with Clickable Image Polls

Last month, I had the opportunity to design and facilitate a workshop for the Next Generation Learning Spaces conference here in Nashville. Faculty, staff, and administrators attended the three-day conference to explore new ideas at the intersection of learning spaces, technology, and pedagogy, pretty much my favorite intersection in all of higher education.

My session, held in the Library Community Room here on campus, was titled “Creating Active Learning Environments: One Way or Another.” The title of the session is borrowed from the subtitle of my book, Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments, published in 2009 by Jossey-Bass. For my learning spaces workshop, I wanted to extend the idea that new technologies (like classroom response systems) and student-centered pedagogies (peer instruction, for instance) can be used to create active learning environments in almost any classroom.

This was a workshop, not a presentation, and so it featured several points of interaction among participants. The first was the most interesting to me since it provided me a chance to experiment with a classroom response system tool I had been wanting to try out for some time.

Last fall, Poll Everywhere added a “clickable image” question type. An instructor can upload an image to Poll Everywhere, then embed that image in a question. When students respond to the question using a mobile device (smartphone, tablet, laptop), they click (or tap) somewhere on the image. That location then shows up on the instructor’s view of the question, typically projected on a big screen for all students to see. The result is something like a Google map with lots of pins in, with each pin representing a student response. What you can do with this depends on what kinds of images you work with, but I can see immediate applications in, say, biology, earth science, and art history.

Use Coordinate Axes to Create a Discussion Map

For my workshop, I distributed photos of three different classrooms to the workshop participants. I asked the participants to work in groups to place each classroom on a set of coordinate axes representing the “paradigm” and “flexibility” ideas I introduced earlier, from single-purpose on the left to multi-purpose on the right, from transmission on the bottom to interaction on the top.

Here’s the first of the three classroom photos I shared with workshop participants, a classroom at Indiana University-Bloomington:

The discussion went something like this: When you look at this classroom, do you expect it to be a place of transmission of information or of interaction among students and faculty? And do you see this more of a single-purpose classroom or one that supports multiple different teaching practices? That is, where would you place this classroom on the following flexibility-paradigm axes?

After workshop participants discussed these questions and each group came to consensus regarding placement of the classroom on these axes, they reported their results via Poll Everywhere.

I asked groups to make sure they had someone to play reporter– someone with a smartphone, tablet, or laptop they could use to access pollev.com/derekbruff, where the clickable image question was available. Here’s the result:

Coordinate axes seemed to serve as a good way to have participants play with the “flexibility” and “paradigm” ideas. Feedback from participants (as well as the overall noise level in the room) indicates that was indeed the case.

I created this clickable image question in Poll Everywhere by uploading the coordinate axes graphic seen above, which I created in PowerPoint. The image could have been anything: a diagram of a cell or a topographic map or a Renaissance painting. For example, John Damaso, who teachers Honors and AP English at Brophy Preparatory School, used clickable image polls to help students discuss Shakespeare.

He was also inspired by my example to use coordinate axes, this time to graph students’ appraisal of the reporting in Serial.

I’ve found coordinate axes a useful visual tool for exploring ideas since I first saw them used this way on Greg Kulowiec’s blog back in 2009. Greg is a history teacher, and he used axes to have his students make sense of individual events in the US Revolutionary War. I’ve used them in several different ways over the years (many inspired by Dan Roam’s use of axes in The Back of the Napkin), but this week was the first time I’ve used coordinate axes with a classroom response system. The activity went really well, providing a good structure for the small-group and large-group conversations I wanted to foster at the workshop and giving me an aggregation tool for making sense of perspectives in the room and guiding those conversations.

Tips on Running a Clickable Image Poll Discussion

1. Hide results until the right moment, to keep responses independent.

While groups were discussing and responding, I used the poll controls to hide the pins from the display on the main screen, so that groups had to answer the question independently. Once I felt confident most of the groups had responded, I revealed the pins (which “fell” onto the axes in a nice animation), then used the aggregated responses to guide a whole-group discussion of the questions at hand.

2. Everyone will need access to the internet, via WiFi or a data plan.

You can’t respond to a clickable image question by text message. That makes perfect sense, but it’s worth pointing out. One of Poll Everywhere’s advantages is that, for multiple-choice or free-text questions, participants can respond via Web or SMS text messaging, but to respond to clickable image questions, participants need a mobile device with a Web connection, which could limit participation in some contexts.

3. Don’t allow unlimited responses to a clickable image poll.

It is probably best to limit responses to one or two per person. If you allow unlimited responses, you can end up with response patterns such as this one:

See that distribution of responses near the left-hand side of the axes? That’s a smiley face. No harm done in this workshop — I wanted a light and friendly atmosphere — but I can see this kind of thing being annoying in a classroom. Fortunately, Poll Everywhere provides a way for you to set a limit on the number of responses an individual participant can submit, and that limit can be as low as one.

It’s pretty easy to accidentally tap the screen of your tablet, so I think an extra response may be needed. Of course, that means you have to be careful in interpreting student responses. For instance, the “pin” in the upper right quadrant above, was that an accidental response or a strong minority opinion?

That said, I’m now a big fan of Poll Everywhere’s ability to handle “placemark” questions. I’m sure to recommend this tool to instructors who don’t mind having a class full of students using mobile devices to enhance learning. The coordinate axes (loaded into Poll Everywhere as a simple image) provided participants a useful tool for analyzing the classroom photos I shared; the use of the response system made it clear that I really expected everyone to participate and submit answers (“all skate”); and the aggregation of responses made possible by the response system allowed me to lead discussion in a way that was responsive to the perspectives and ideas in the room. This kind of activity could be implemented in just about any classroom, even a stadium-seating lecture hall, provided the room had Wifi or cellular coverage.

For more on this activity, including photos of the three classrooms the workshop participants analyzed, see my blog post, “Learning Spaces + Coordinate Axes + Placemark Questions.” For some really creative ideas (submitted by workshop participants) on creating active learning environments in particular kinds of classrooms, see my follow-up blog post, “Hacking the Classroom: Ideas from the Next Gen #LearningSpaces Conference.” Workshop slides are available, too.

Derek Bruff

Derek Bruff is director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching and a senior lecturer in the Vanderbilt Department of Mathematics. As director, he oversees the Center’s programming and offerings for faculty and graduate students, helping them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching and learning. He also consults regularly with campus leaders about pedagogical issues, seeking to foster a university culture that supports effective teaching. The views and opinions expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of Vanderbilt University.

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