For those of you following my blog, you know I'm a fan of "graphical response" systems that provide rapid feedback and increase student engagement in class. One of my favorite FREE tools for enabling graphical response is InkSurvey, a beta web application from the Colorado School of Mines. The good news is that the newest beta version of InkSurvey is now available to try...

For those of you not familiar with InkSurvey, it is a web-based system for presenting questions to your students. The questions can ask for open text responses and/or "sketches". Tablets make it easier, but are not required. Faculty create an account and define questions that will be used during class. Students are sent to a response webpage where the questions appear. Anonymous submissions are then viewable by the professor, who can in turn share them with the rest of the class. The software is no-frills betaware, but it really is easy once you get signed up.

To see what this looks like in action, check out the video below (with a great tongue-in-cheek intro - who IS  that guy in the white toga?):

If you're looking for a quick way to try "real time graphical response" in your course, feel free to give InkSurvey a try. If you're looking for something free but with more features, I recommend Classroom Presenter  (Richard Anderson, University of Washington). For a robust, full-featured classroom interaction solution with full support from a commercial company, I highly recommend DyKnow.

Many thanks to Frank Kowalski and his team of students who create and support InkSurvey and make it available for all of us to try...