Many student affairs/co-curricular programs have moved to a virtual environment, commonly on Zoom. This has changed the way we can do data collection with a “captive audience.” Before the pandemic, programs could have students complete an assessment form in person, which usually yielded a high response rate and immediate feedback. Because we are not all physically in the same room, collecting data in the moment can be a challenge.
If you have not checked out the Zoom polling function, you might want to do that. They have a step-by-step tutorial at https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/213756303-Polling-for-meetings. Like any good assessment, you will want to plan ahead. It’s much easier to create your questions ahead of time, rather than while you are in your meeting. Remember, if you are asking bad questions, it doesn’t matter how fancy your platform is—you will still get bad answers that won’t help you.
You can ask both choose one and choose all of the above types of questions. Unfortunately, you cannot use a text response type of question. You can specify if you want the responses to be anonymous or connected to your participants’ information. You can also have up to 10 response options in each question. Plus, you can have multiple questions inside each poll.
When you are in the meeting, you can launch the poll by clicking on the poll icon at the bottom of the screen. Your participants can then answer the question. When you end the poll question, you can also share it with your participants if you would like to spark discussion or clarify information. You might want to have several poll questions in each program, so you keep participants engaged.
After the meeting, you can sign into the Zoom web portal to access your results, which will be generated in an Excel spreadsheet. If you chose for the responses to be anonymous, you will see that indicated in the spreadsheet. If you did not choose that option, you will see the user name and user email. This allows you to follow up if you need to contact participants. You can then analyze the results for any information that will help you improve what you are doing.
While no one asked to shift all of our program delivery to an online format, it does give us an opportunity to learn and use new technology in data collection. It’s okay to not be perfect in it every time, but lots of people can empathize and help. We can stop assessment, or we can embrace the opportunity. I hope that you embrace the opportunity!