Classroom polling at Williams College is infrequent and sporadic occurring in classes only when they are most pedagogically appropriate for the content. Some courses use classroom polling once a semester. Other courses use classroom polling often, but the data is not used in grading or stored for future analysis. Flexibility and portability make classroom polling an easy tool to apply when the anonymous collection of class input serves a teaching purpose. Recently, classroom polling vendors have moved to a subscription model where classroom polling users have cloud accounts that require monthly fees. This new subscription model does not match with the use of classroom polling at Williams College. Students do not purchase accounts with monthly fees to participate in classroom polling that may or may not be used in classes. This paper follows Williams College as it creates and follows a new process for finding the right classroom polling vendor for its campus.
