The simplicity of the tool allows you to focus on its teaching and learning potential: promoting active, collaborative and deep learning; increasing participation and interactivity; promoting discussion; increasing retention of core lecture information; increasing engagement; giving feedback; helping students prepare for exams or run team competitions. Have a look at a few examples below.

Here are some user's suggestions for interactive, creative and pedagogically sound ways of using Poll Everywhere: click here to see the examples. There is also a library of ready to use quiz questions, organised by subject, so get in touch with us to learn how to use it.

If you're looking for more ideas on how to promote collaboration and active learning in your lecture, get in touch to book training via the Service Desk.

Reseach into Polling Solutions

Melanie Brady, Helena Seli, Jane Rosenthal, 'Metacognition and the influence of polling systems: how do clickers compare with low technology systems', Educational Technology Research and Development, December 2013, Volume 61, Issue 6, pp 885-902.

Susanne Voelkel & Daimark Bennett, 'New uses for a familiar technology: introducing mobile phone polling in large classes', Innovations in Education and Teaching International, Volume 51, Issue 1, 2014

If you are interested in using Poll Everywhere in your teaching

1. Request a Poll Everywhere account via ServiceNow

2. Please allow at least 48 hours for requests to be actioned.
3. You will receive an email with instructions on how to join City University's premium service plan and a link to do so.
4. You will receive a separate email inviting you for training, and a link to our online guidance on Poll Everywhere.
5. Familiarise yourself with the guidance on this page for the polling options you want.
6. Test in advance of the session.
7. Ready to Go!

If you want to explore Poll Everywhere before requesting a full account, you can sign up for a free account on their website. Click on Sign Up and select the presenter account. You can log in and test creating polls. However, the free acount doesn't have access to the full range of functionality and settings of the full acount. If you plan to use the system regularly within your teaching, request the full account by following the steps above.

Index

• Creating polls
• Testing Polls
• Creating polls with equations
• Advanced use
• Registering students to track participation and achievement
• Grouping questions
• Sharing questions with colleagues

Creating and testing polls:

1. Go to http://www.polleverywhere.com and log in.
2. Click on  Activities - Create.
   

3. Select your preferred question type. There are a number of different question types: The most commonly used are:

• Multiple Choice - the audience chooses one or more answers from a set of responses you provide. You can use them to test knowledge or to vote on an option.
• Word Cloud - responses appear as a word cloud. The more popular an answer, the larger it appears on screen.
• Q&A - the audience submits their own responses and then can vote on all the audience submissions.
• Rank Order - participants move options into the desired order, and then submit the reordered list as one response. The responses are shown as an overall rank on a bar or column graph.
• Clickable Image - use preloaded images or upload your own image - photgraphs, maps, etc. Click on the image to record a response.
• Competition - a series of multiple choice questions.
• Survey - Surveys allow you to ask your participants multiple questions at once.
• Open Ended - This allows the audience to respond to the question with a written answer. Answers can be displayed as a list or cluster.

Click on More to see further types of questions. See Poll Everywhere's online support for support on all question types.

4. Write your question in the Title box. Check out our Student Response System Guide for some tips on how to write effective SRS questions.

5. If you add an image to your poll question, you will be prompted to add alternative (alt) text. You must add alt text to any images to make them accessible to those with reduced vision.

6. Click on Create.

Your question has been created and you'll be taken to a new screen, where you can run or test the poll, and configure additional settings.

Additional settings.

In the presentation window, an additional menu allows you to update the poll's settings.

	Visual settings - allows you to change the colour scheme, font or font size.
	Activate - publishes your poll
	Show results - toggle between hiding and showing responses
	Lock - responses are not allowed when the poll is locked
	Clear results - removes previous responses - useful if you want to re-use a poll in a new class
	Fullscreen

You can also import multiple polls at once, if you created them in Excel. Click here to read how.

Testing polls

1. From Activities - open the poll you want to test
2. Activate and make sure your poll has been activated.
3. On the side menu, click on Test
4. Test the Web and Text Message options; check the number of times students can vote, the instructions, etc.

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Creating polls with equations

Poll Everywhere supports polls with equations. See this online guidance on how to enter formulae so that the system translates text into mathematical expressions. 

Advanced use

Poll Everywhere is flexible and some of its options allow you to turn polls into assessment for learning opportunities. Here are some of the possibilities:

1. Marking an option as correct - turn a poll into a quiz
   • Create a multiple choice question (marking options as correct only works with multiple choice questions)
   • Go to Polls - My Polls - and click on Edit, in front of that multiple choice question;

1. • Tick "Grade incoming responses";
   • Under the correct option, tick "Mark as correct";
   
2. Click to enlarge
3. 
   
   
   
   • Click on Save poll;
   • When you're running your poll, you can reveal the correct option by clicking on the tick symbol (see Overview - Running polls).
     
     

Still in Activities - My Activities - Edit a specific poll, - Configure you can:

• define how many times people can vote (one, by default);
• define how people can respond (SMS, web, Twitter, private link); 
• define who can respond (everybody or only registered participants - see below for details on registering students);
• define when schedule polls to run and stop at predefined times.
• define the level of moderation. If the selected, the profanity filter can either block responses containing banned words or replace them with asterisks.

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Registering students to track participation and achievement

It is possible to register students by name, which allows you to manage participation, automatically grade students' answers and cross-reference correct answers in different polls. It also allows you to run polls to registered participants only.

However, there are data protection implications to this, please get in touch with LEaD via IT Self Service portal to discuss your intended use and there may be other more appropriate tools to use to manage your requirements. If pre-registering students is the best option you will need to explain to students that they are being pre-registered with Poll Everywhere and give them an opportunity to object and not be registered with Poll Everywhere.

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Grouping questions

You can group questions to organise them by lecture, subject, cohort, etc. It makes reusing the questions and tracking students' answers easier. It also allows you to run a Survey view, which, although not easy to set up, allows you to create a group of questions students can complete at their own pace (see Running a Survey view: a student-paced poll with several grouped polls in Delivering your session using Poll Everywhere).

To group questions:

• In My polls - create your polls; if you have them, ignore this step;
• Select the polls you want to group by ticking them and click on Group;

• Click on Edit to change the new group's name.

Sharing questions with colleagues

It is possible to share questions you create with colleagues and import questions they have created. If you are interested in collaborating with colleagues to develop a question bank, please see the Teams and Shared Activities section below or get in touch with us via Service Now.

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Index

• Running a poll
• Running a Survey view: a student paced poll with several grouped polls
• Running a competition
• Using PowerPoint
• Using the Mobile Presenter 

Running a poll

In My polls, select the poll you want to run. Press the Activate button to publish.

Students will be able to vote using their own devices, either by using the browser page, or by texting.

Important:

• Make sure the Poll has been activated. Press the Activate button to publish.
• Make sure students can vote in the ways you want them to (SMS, web, etc.); you can check using the How people can respond options when running the poll, or, in My Polls, hovering over the poll and clicking on Edit. If you want to define these settings for several polls, in My Polls, select all the polls you need and click on Edit multiple - How people can respond.

When you're finished, make sure you lock the poll (which stops it from accepting further responses) and you also deactivate it.

Check out our Student Response System Guide for some tips on when and how to run your questions (under "Examples of SRS use").

After you run the poll, you can Clear results, this will not impact your ability to run reports on students' participation, if they have registered.

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Running a Survey view: a student paced poll with several grouped polls:

• After creating and grouping your polls, tick the box next to the group name to select all its poll questions.
• Click the Activate icon to publish the survey.
• All the questions n the Poll with turn green to show you they are active.
• Student can access your survey via your usual pollev.com response page or via a separate URL if you click "share".
• You can convert back to a group of questions.

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Running a competition

You can run a poll as a competition. Participants gain points by answering correctly and quickly.

At the end of the competition, you can display a leader board to announce the winners.

See Poll Everywhere's online guidance for help on how to set up a competition.

Each participant will be assigned a pseudonym unless participants are registered - see above.

Using PowerPoint

If you want to launch a poll from a PowerPoint presentation, the simplest solution is to copy the poll link and insert it on your slide. To do it:

• Create a poll or open an existing poll
• Activate the poll
• Got to Present > Share.
• Copy the link
• Open your presentation and select the image or text you want to hyperlink
• Right click and select Hyperlink
• Paste the  link you copied

Using the Mobile Presenter 

If you don't want to run the poll from the front of the room, behind your computer, you can use Poll Everywhere's Mobile Presenter. On your mobile device:

• Open your device's browser and go to pollev.com/present or download the Poll Everywhere app (available for Android and iOS)
• Log in with your Poll Everywhere account.
• Select Presenters.
• You can access and activate existing polls via My Activities
• You can also create and activate polls via Create Activity

Mobile presenter and PowerPoint

• You can also use the mobile presenter to connect a PowerPoint presentation and advance through slides.
• Open your PowerPoint presentation
• Make sure that you have logged into the Poll Everywhere plugin in PowerPoint.
• Put the presentation into slideshow mode.
• Open the mobile presenter and select Remote Control.
• Connect to your presentation.

• Use the mobile presenter to advance through your slides.
• You can activate, deactivate, lock and hide polls

• Do you need more information? Go here.
   

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You can insert Poll Everywhere polls into Powerpoint presentations, create polls within PowerPoint or convert slides into polls.

The PowerPoint plugin is installed on every presentation Pod in the university.

See the video below for an introduction, or scroll down for full details.

View video guidance in full screen

You can insert a hyperlink to polls you have already created in the same way that you add any links to a slide. Once you have opened the link, activate and run your polls as above. Or you can insert the polls as slides within your presentation using the Poll Everywhere Powerpoint plugin.

• Installing the PowerPoint plugin
• Creating new polls within PowerPoint
• Inserting existing polls into PowerPoint
• Activating your poll within PowerPoint
• Converting PowerPoint slides into polls

Poll Everywhere PowerPoint Plugin

Poll Everywhere supply a plugin for PowerPoint which allows you insert polls as slides in your presentation. You can also created polls within Powerpoint (although with a more limited range of functionality) or convert existing slides into polls.

Installing the PowerPoint Plugin

The plugin is installed on all presentation pod PC, but if you want to downlaod it to your won PC to prepare slides with embedded polls, follow these instructions to install it on your PC.

On a City PC:

Click on the search icon on the toolbar and type in "software center" Please note, the US spelling of "center".

In the Software Center, you can search for Poll Everywhere in the searchbox or arange the icons A-Z to locate the link.

Click on Poll Everywhere and then on Install.

On a City Mac: Open Self-Service, search for Poll Everywhere and install.

Installing the plugin on your personal device

If you want to instll the plugin on your own personal PC or laptop, go to this page.

Click on Download and then follow the instructions to install.

Once you have installed the plugin, when you open PowerPoint, you will see the Poll Everywhere tab in the toolbar. (see below)

Click the Log in button and you will be presented with the window below.

Enter your login details.

Once you have logged in, you are now ready to add a poll to your presentation. You can either:

• Click New to create a new poll within PowerPoint.
• Click Insert to insert a poll you have already made in PollEverywhere.com.

Creating new polls within PowerPoint

When creating a new poll you will be presented with the window below. Choose the type of poll on the top and add the required information, such as question and choice of answers. 

To access the other poll types, click on More.

Please note, at this stage of poll creation, you do not have the access to the same functionality that you have on the website.

You can change the settings of the poll after you have activated it within the slideshow - see below.

Once you have created your poll, simply click 'insert' to add the poll to a new slide.

Inserting existing polls into PowerPoint

Open or create your PowerPoint presentation.

At the point where you wish to add your poll, open the Poll Everywhere tab on PowerPoint and click Insert.

You will be prompted to log into your Poll Everywhere account.

A window will open which shows you all the polls you have already created in PollEverywhere.com

Tick the box next to individual questions to insert them singly, or tick the box next to a group to insert all the questions in that group.

Each question will be inserted into your presentation as a separate slide.

Activating your poll within PowerPoint

When you create a poll within PowerPoint, you do not have to activate it on the website to make it live.

Start your slideshow as normal. When you reach the slide with the poll, the poll automatically activates.

If you click onto the poll while in the slideshow mode, a menu appears.

This menu allows you to:

• change the visual settings
• deactivate the poll
• hide or show results
• show the correct answer
• lock the poll
• clear results

You can make changes to the settings of the questions.

Please note: the changes you make will be saved to the online poll and to the live poll when the slideshow is run, however the thumbnail and the slide will show the original version of the question when you are in edit mode.

Converting PowerPoint slides into polls

You can create multiple choice questions from existing PowerPoint Slides.This may be useful if you want to re-use an existing presentation, or if you are creating your presentationon a PC without the plugin installed. If you do have access to the plugin or POll Everywhere website, use them to create your polls as you will have far greater functionality.

To convert a slide to a poll

The slide must be in the format of a title box and a content box.

Whatever text is in the title box will be converted to the question.

Any bulleted text in the content box will be converted into the answers.

In the Poll Everywhere plugin menu, select convert and then insert.

Embed a multiple choice poll and its results in a website

You can embed a poll and its results into a website, or Moodle page.

Create your poll.

Select Present > Share > Embed Activity

This opens a new webpage. Scroll down to the embed code. Copy the html code.

You also copy the html code for the responses to the activity from the same page.

You can embed your poll into Moodle in , for example, a label or a page.

Paste the copied html code into your label using the expanded text editor.

You can use the same method to embed your poll into a website or blog.

You can present your polls in Microsoft Teams and Zoom meetings via screensharing.

Please note: students cannot respond to the polls from within the Teams or Zoom meeting itself. They will only be able to respond by opening the poll in a separate browser window or by opening the Poll Everywhere app.

• If you are running your poll from the website, share your screen to show your browser.
• If you have embedded your poll in PowerPoint, share your screen to show the presentation. Going into slideshow mode when presenting in Teams or Zoom will  trigger the polls to activate as usual.

If you don't want to use Poll Everywhere -

Within Zoom, you can create and present simple multiple choice polls using the Polls function. You cannot mark a question as correct within the poll.

Within Teams meetings, you can create simple multiple choice polls in the meeting chat using Forms. You cannot mark a question as correct within the poll.

You can share polls and activities through the teams function. When users are added to a team, all the users in that team can share activities with other member of the team, and present any shared activities independently.

Users can see activities shared with their team on the Shared With Me page.

Users may be in any number of teams at once. Users may see, present, and run reports on activities that have been shared with their team.

• Poll Everywhere - Guidance and Inspiration#Sharing a team
• Poll Everywhere - Guidance and Inspiration#Requesting a team

View video guidance in fullscreen

Sharing a team

Once an account administrator has set up Teams, any presenter on the account may share activities with their user group. All users must be part of a team to share activities with that team. Only the owner or creator of an activity may share it with others.

Step 1: Put the activities into Groups. Hover over the name of the activity group and click Share.

Step 2: Select the team(s) to share the activities with all users in the team. All users within those teams have the ability to present, but are unable edit the activities. If you want to edit any shared polls, you can make a copy of the shared activitiy to add it to your polls.

Step 3: The share icon will appear next to any and all groups that are shared. Click on this icon to stop sharing or to confirm who it is shared with.

Any activities added to the activity group will immediately be shared. Any new users added to the team will also immediately get access.

• All users in the team will need a PollEverywhere account. Please see the Getting an Account section at the top of the page.
• You will also need a team to be created. Please title this PollEverywhere Team Request (FAO EdTech Operations). Click to Log a Generic Service Request.
  

  • In the Service Request, please give:

    • The name of the team you would like to be created.
    • A list of the names and email addresses of the people you would like in the team in the form (forename, surname, City University email address).

Report cards: tracking student participation

You can check the answers for all the polls you run, but if you ask your students to register (see Registering students to track participation and achievement), you can track their achievement: the number of correct and incorrect answers, their overall result as a percentage and you can generate a group rank.

After you run the poll, you can Clear results, this will not impact your ability to run reports on students' participation. 

To create a report:

1. From the Polls page, click on Reports
2. Create new report
   
   

3. Choose the report type according to what you need to analyse

6. Look at the results

Students do not have to register to participate in polls. If you are using polls as an ice breaker, for example, you may not need to identify respondents. 

It is possible to register students by name, which allows you to manage participation, automatically grade students' answers and cross-reference correct answers in different polls. It also allows you to run polls to registered participants only.

However, there are data protection implications to this, please get in touch with LEaD via IT Self Service portal to discuss your intended use and there may be other more appropriate tools to use to manage your requirements. If pre-registering students is the best option you will need to explain to students that they are being pre-registered with Poll Everywhere and give them an opportunity to object and not be registered with Poll Everywhere.

If pre-registering students is the best option, directions below are available on how to register students with Poll Everywhere.

• Log in to Poll Everywhere.
• Go to My polls
• Select the survey in order to select all the polls that are part of the survey. 
• Go to Groups - New group and give your group a descriptive name; e.g. module name peer feedback 
• Hover over your group and click on Invite 
• Copy the link and make it available to students by email or through Moodle
• Students will be asked to create an account and will be automatically enrolled in your group. Due to the Poll Everywhere licence we have, students must use their City University email account to register.