Hardware-based audience polling solutions such as TurningPoint and iClicker have been around for years and remain in use primarily because of the inertia in larger organisations.

Systems that use hardware voting pads or clickers have lots of disadvantages:-

Disadvantages of Hardware Voting Systems

1. Expensive to purchase
2. Have to be organised in advance of the presentation
3. Have to be handed out to the audience or class then collected back in.
4. Have to be recharged or have batteries replaced from time to time.
5. Cannot respond to changes in voting software easily
6. Often use their own WIFI system to connect
7. Don’t always integrate seemlessly into popular presentation software

 

Now that smartphones, tablets and WIFI or cellular data networks are everywhere, there’s a far simpler “bring your own device” (BYOD) approach to getting feedback from your presentation audience.

Systems like ParticiPoll collect votes using audience members smart phones, tablets and notebooks and integrate directly with popular presentation software like PowerPoint.

 

Advantages of Software-Based Polling Systems

1. Everyone has a smart phone or tablet now
2. Presenter or venue don’t need to worry about providing hardware
3. Uses existing WIFI or cellular data networks
4. Turns phones into a useful tool rather than a distraction
5. Can be updated to respond to changes in voting software
6. Can collect free-text comments, questions and other feedback
7. Can be rented on a ‘software-as-a-service’ (SaaS) basis.
8. Retain historical poll results in the cloud
9. Personalisation options for the voting buttons

 

ParticiPoll is one of the simplest of the lot as you don’t need to load pre-prepared questions and answers into a third-party system and your audience don’t need to install an app. Presenters just pose a question plus possible answers inside a normal PowerPoint slide and drop a poll histogram into it. You can add polls to your existing PowerPoint presentations and some presenters even drop ad hoc polls into live presentations as they’re going along!

Start your free trial of ParticiPoll now!