Hosting an Engaging Virtual Event for Educators with Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere powered Sakai’s 2023 Virtual Conference – creating an engaging and interactive remote event for Sakai users. Sakai LMS is an open-source learning management system (LMS) designed to help educators create a collaborative teaching environment for their students. The Sakai Virtual Conference brought together faculty, instructional designers, administrators, and technical staff from universities across the country, such as University of Michigan, Pepperdine University and the University of Hawaii, to learn about content creation, accessibility, and data privacy best practices when using the Sakai platform.
Presenters and attendees had the opportunity to try Poll Everywhere for themselves via fun icebreakers and questions throughout presentations, a live trivia contest via our Competitions Activity, and a chance to win a free Poll Everywhere Instructor plan for a year.
As the primary audience engagement tool for the event, the host Wilma Hodges, Sakai Community Manager, used Poll Everywhere to power her opening remarks with fun icebreakers to better get to know the attendees. To start, Wilma used a Clickable Image with a World Map to ask attendees where they were joining from. Next, she used a Word Cloud to ask attendees about their favorite aspect of Sakai.
After the lunch break, Hodges reignited the energy by hosting a fun trivia contest all about Sakai using the Competitions Activity. Poll Everywhere’s Competitions is a multiple-choice based Activity that uses a timer, a point system with a leaderboard, and lots of confetti to challenge participant’s knowledge. The Competition was full of facts about Sakai, the history of the organization, and different ways Sakai can be used in the classroom. The Competition saw some fierce competition between Sakai power users but in the end, three winners were announced via the leaderboard.
The virtual conference continued with amazing sessions from Sakai experts. Towards the end of the event, Hodges announced two lucky raffle winners who will receive a free year of Poll Everywhere’s Teams plan.
Sakai’s 2023 Virtual Conference was a success! The Poll Everywhere team is honored to partner with Sakai LMS in creating a memorable and interactive event for university educators. Special thanks to Wilma Hodges for coordinating the event and for choosing Poll Everywhere.