Recording Smiles With Poll Everywhere
I have trudged back and forth between my apartment and my office for the past three days, a four mile walk that is a mixture of solitary reflection and, unbeknownst to me until today, psychological observation. As I huffed up one of the sidewalks that borders the UVA campus this morning, I noticed something that I had not realized: Some people are comfortable with general congeniality and friendliness while others prefer to avoid eye contact from strangers.
My realization began with a smile: I saw a girl walking towards me that I thought that I knew, and I looked her in the eyes and gave her an unassuming smile. She looked at me and smiled (I did not know her) as did a few of the unrelated people around her. Hmmm. I continued, rounding a short bend in the road and arriving at a pedestrian crosswalk with a flashing light that blinked, “5, 4, 3…” Assured that the Charlottesville traffic would not yield to one of the many backpack-wearing students trying to cross the street at the last minute, I waited with an increasingly large group of people who were impatiently wanting to move along. Scanning the crowd, I saw an older gentleman doing the same, and I gave him a friendly head bob. He looked at me and immediately shifted his gaze to the ground.
The remainder of my morning walk became a sociological study: how many people could I look in the eye, provide some sort of acknowledgment (smile or head bob), and receive a reciprocal reaction? By the time that I reached my office, I received quite a few full-fledged smiles, a number of who-are-you stares, and countless I-should-divert-my-eyes reactions. I am not that scary.
After sitting through a number of meetings, I spent the final ten minutes of my afternoon creating a Poll Everywhere “poll” for my journey home. This poll was not a poll but more of a research question in the most unscientific use of the term: How do people react to a random smile from a stranger?
I strapped on my backpack, pulled out my iPhone, grabbed a sheet of paper that listed all of the codes that I needed for recording, and began the trip back to my apartment. I took the long route home in order to maximize the number of passing people, and I texted/web posted (3G) all of the reactions that I received. Here are the results:
As a data collection tool, Poll Everywhere is a little cumbersome. It is difficult to remember all of the codes, perhaps an indication that paper-and-pencil is a better option for this type of task. The number of responses is also a limitation. Plus, texting/typing and walking is not that easy to do (and a bit dangerous).
However, repurposing Poll Everywhere as a data collection tool is infinitely more engaging than some of the alternative methods. It is interesting to think about how teachers and students might use Poll Everywhere to collect data in science, anthropology, sociology, etc…
Curby Alexander
Very interesting idea, Willy. I’m impressed you walk that trek everyday. We lived about half the distance to UVA as you do, and it was still a pretty good hike for me. I think it took about 18 minutes from my front door to Lambeth House. Anyway, if you have any interest in a longitudinal study, you should do the same thing with your students over the next few years. I ran into my students on grounds all the time, and it was amazing which ones would say hello and which ones would purposely try not to make eye contact. Just a random thought. Using mobile devices to gather data is a great idea, especially when you can also include GPS data. I know you are familiar with the augmented reality stuff Chris Dede does, and there may be a day when data is displayed in real-time as an overlay on the place where it was collected. Very cool stuff.