Grading Strategies
Poll Everywhere is not simply a tool to track attendance. Rather it is a formative assessment tool, which means it is assessment for learning.
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Activities can either be graded (multiple choice, hotspot) or ungraded (word clouds, short answer, etc.)
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If graded, consider dropping x number of lowest scores, so that if students miss class or have a technical issue, you
- Do not administer high-stakes graded activities such as tests within Poll Everywhere due to the chance of user/software/network error.
- Make students aware if you are planning on using Poll Everywhere to record and grade attendance or participation.
Be transparent and specific.
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How do Poll Everywhere activities impact the students' overall course grade, if at all?
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Will you bring in your poll grades into Canvas? If so, daily, weekly or at the end of the semester?
Grading Tips and Running Reports
Do you want to track correct answers (grades) or participation? Or both?
The grade percentage and the participation percentage are different. See What's in a Poll Everywhere Gradebook?
- The participation percentage is the percentage of Polls answered by the participant and does not matter whether participants answered correctly.
- The grade percentage is based on graded activities.
- Only multiple choice and clickable image questions can be graded.
- Responses to ungraded polls (shown below gray dots) are not counted.
- If multiple responses per question are allowed, any correct response marks the entire response correct.
- By default, graded responses activities are either correct or incorrect. Worth 1 or 0. However, you can manually assign different points to different options.
- All of the graded poll activities selected for the report, are rolled up into a grade percentage based on the correct responses / graded activities.
Example 1 - Grade Report
In this example, there are 8 poll activities: 6 of them are graded; 2 are not graded (for example, survey). By default, each graded poll question is worth 1 point. Marjorie Shepard only completed 2 of the 8 activities. Her participation percentage is 2/8 = 25%. Her grade is 2/6 (only 6 of the questions were graded) = 33%
Example 2 - Grade Report
In this example, there are 5 poll activities: 4 of them are graded; 1 is not graded (for example, survey). Each activity is worth different points (10, 5, 1, and 5) for a total of 21 pts. Marjorie Shepard completed all 5 activities.
Her participation percentage is 5/5 = 100%. Her grade is 15/21= 71%
How Canvas Interprets the Poll Everywhere Column(s)
You can export a grade report directly from Poll Everywhere to Canvas. Each time you export a report, Canvas creates a new column in the grade book.
- Some instructors prefer to not export or track data in Canvas at all but instead, use the information for formative assessment in class only.
- Some instructors choose to export a weekly grade or participation report (resulting in approximately 15 columns in your gradebook), and then feed those columns into a single, calculated column, which can then be weighted in a Canvas assignment group.
- Some instructors may want to export a weekly report, and manually delete the previous week's column in Canvas.
Regardless of the method you choose, you will want to consider organizing your Poll activities into folders by course or subject.
Contact the Technology and Learning Program to discuss your specific needs.