Q&A: polling and surveying via

SMS
A model for student/faculty collaborations

Christian Sueiras
Arturo Portnoy

Department of Mathematical
Sciences at UPRM
Objectives

•  Go through a complete production cycle: idea, proof of

concept, testing, prototype, alpha, beta, final PRODUCT.
•  Specifics: Design and implement a simple to use tool for
polling and surveying via SMS.
•  The tool must make use of a free gateway, such as Zeep
Mobile.
•  The tool should allow users to quickly export the obtained
data and present the poll results in an attractive and useful
way. Polling must take place in real time (max. delay:
seconds).
•  The tool should allow for the construction of tag clouds for
brainstorming.
•  The tool should have minimal requirements on the server:
PHP, MySQL.
Motivation

•  Precalculus megasections where expensive clickers are

used for student interactions in real time.
•  Summer student strike, and other issues related to efficient
voting and academic democracy.
•  Empower the AEMCC to focus on applying specialty skills, in
collaboration with faculty, to produce concrete solutions to
practical problems.
•  Encourage research and collaboration between students
and faculty.
•  Find viable sources of revenue for the AEMCC.
Progress

•  Single user, minimal version (Google spreadsheet [data

visualization] + Wordle [tag cloud]): COMPLETE.
•  Multi user, data visualization and tag cloud: ALPHA
•  Final enterprise web 2.0 version: NOT STARTED
•  This final enterprise version will be used to generate income
for the AEMCC.
(Very) Simple System Diagram

Web
Mobile Services
Gateway Layer

Web
Application
Future plans

•  An electoral version, where anonymity of the voter can be

guaranteed.
Demo: Lets See How Good You Know
Lockheed Martin
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