Academic librarians are always looking for ways to get students’ feedback during and after an instruction session. I believe that students want to give feedback. They just don’t see an option to engage with the librarian or instructor during the instruction session.
Classroom response systems are becoming a helpful tool for librarians and instructors. My current employer use clickers during an instruction session. Clickers are fun but they are time consuming to pass out and collect clickers for every session. If you have a large group of students attending the session, someone is left out due to lack of clickers. Clickers are not free. We only have one set and the set is rotated between four campuses.
Last semester, the Public Services Librarian introduced Poll Everywhere (polleverywhere.com) to her instruction session. Poll Everywhere enables students to answer questions during the instruction session by text or a web form. The answer appears in real time, which I like for quick question and answer icebreakers. Poll Everywhere is free.
Another free technology is Wiffiti (wiffiti.com). I have no experience with this technology but I am hoping to use it during the Fall Semester with my computer students (to get feedback of my lectures). Wiffiti is a digital bulletin board that allows people to add comments anonymously by web form, text message, or Twitter hash tag.
I got a feeling that more librarians and instructors will embrace the active learning model. These tools could be a helpful beginning to active students and effective instruction.
Librarian in the Classroom 