Since December 6 of last year, senior Caleb Hostetler’s Honors capstone project, a survey machine, has been residing outside Northlawn’s dining hall. In the days since then, students, faculty, and staff have participated in answering a daily question, usually thought of by Hostetler. He was partially inspired by attending the Fall 2021 Thailand Intercultural Program. “We would always have daily polls we would put in the groupchat and people were having a lot of fun with that,” says Hostetler. “I thought it would be fun to bring something like that to the wider campus because it was a pretty fun thing. And it seems like it’s gotten a pretty positive reception.”
“I use it every day. I just walk in [the lobby] and get really excited to use it,” says Sophomore Kate Stutzman.
“I just think it’s entertaining to come into the Caf and answer a question,” agrees Junior Allie Hanson.
Entertainment was always the end goal for the project according to Hostetler. “I thought it would be fun to bring up questions people could talk about. I don’t have any grand plans for the data or anything.”
“It makes people think about the decisions they make and it [encourages] people to have conversations with their friends about it and start a healthy debate,” says senior Ethan Klassen. As a commuter student he “unfortunately [doesn’t] get to see the results” usually, but nevertheless votes every time he passes through.
“The fact that it’s gotten so much engagement and that people have continued to vote, I’m taking that as a positive thing,” affirms Hostetler. He estimates that, on average, 150-200 people vote each day, although there is a significant drop in participation over weekends.
When asked what makes a good daily question, Hostetler said “Everyone should always be able to press a button. If you ask, ‘What’s your favorite type of meat?’ you should also have an option for ‘I don’t eat meat.’” He admits however that “sometimes it’s hard to know if it’s a good question until after results come in. Surprising results are surprising by nature.” Hostetler submits around 90% of the questions with the other 10% submitted directly to him or through the QR code at the bottom corner of the survey machine’s screen (at time of writing, the QR code is broken but Hostetler plans to fix it eventually) or through the accompanying browser code (10.3.60.120). Hostetler is always looking for question submissions and usually puts them on the machine fairly soon after they are submitted.
Hostetler plans to keep the machine running at least through the end of the semester. “I’ve been trying to find someone to take it over, to keep it going after I graduate. Right now, I’m not sure what will happen to it after I’m gone.” He plans to keep it in the Caf lobby “as long as Bruce allows it.” and is very grateful to Bruce, as well as to the student body, for their enthusiasm towards the project saying, “after the last week of last semester he was really happy to see it continue on this next semester. I had always wanted to keep it going this semester. It would have seemed like a waste to keep it up for just one week before taking it down.” One of his favorite results so far has come from the question on people’s familiarity with the AI writing software Chat GPT. “It made me laugh that 10 people were willing to admit that they used it for schoolwork.”
Students interested in submitting a question or curious about past statistics can type the code 10.3.60.120 into their browsers while on a device connected to EMU wifi.
