Polling Experience

As students working in the library, naturally we wanted to hear from students! In addition to a tabling event, we decided that polling students via a Google Form would be a fairly easy way to gather data across a few weeks. However to do so, we needed to design posters with QR codes to the poll, which meant we needed to think about marketing and design.

I (Elise) am minoring in Arts Technology, a sort of Graphic Design, but I have only taken a few classes. Emma is a Business Marketing student, but she is only a freshman. Together, neither of us had too much marketing/design experience, but luckily we work in an awesome library full of people who do!

We worked on a few posters/flyers in Adobe Express, taking some online Adobe marketing courses, watching tutorials, and capitalizing on the AI-driven UI of Express. We used stock images (obviously, we are talking about OERs here!) and played around with different graphics and catchphrases. We wanted to target students, using the attractive “GET FREE TEXTBOOKS!” angle. Both Emma and I had a ton of fun making different flyers, especially as students able to draw on our experiences in what makes a flyer noticeable for us when it is surrounded by hundreds of other flyers on bulletin boards.

Next, we created the poll. Drawing from other OER-related polls from different schools like the University of Illinois for question inspiration, we specifically worked to design the poll in an accessible, open, and even relatable way. We named the Google Form, “The Textbook Conversation,” because that is exactly what it is and we believe that that is where the embrace of Open Education start — sharing stories and experiences, discourse, and connection!

We put the Form into a QR code, stuck it on our flyers, and met with the Library’s marketing team to get some feedback, as well as go over the different requirements for posting flyers in the library. Here’s what we learned!