Poll Everywhere is a web-based polling tool that accepts responses via text message, browser, or mobile app. It can be used to increase student engagement, assess student learning, and facilitate course management.
Activity results appear in customizable formats (graph, bar chart, word cloud, etc.), and reports can be run to manage and review participation, responses, and grading.
This page is intended for instructors. Students should review Poll Everywhere for Students.
Accessing Poll Everywhere
This tool is available to all Penn affiliates under an institution-wide license.
Creating a presenter account (first-time user)
- Go to Sign up for Poll Everywhere.
- Click I’m a Presenter.
- Sign up with your Penn email in the format yourPennKey@upenn.edu (removing any school affiliation).
- Input a password (you will not need to save this password).
- Click Log in with University of Pennsylvania to sign in
Logging in
To access Poll Everywhere, go to Poll Everywhere, enter your Penn email address in the format yourPennKey@upenn.edu (removing any school affiliation), and click Next. Then, click Log in with University of Pennsylvania.
Please contact canvas@pobox.upenn.edu for support if you are missing prior activities or are limited to 25 participants.
Using Poll Everywhere
We encourage you to reference Poll Everywhere Support’s extensive documentation.
- Create an activity.
- Restrict your audience as appropriate.
- Activate an activity to share with participants.
- Present the activity directly from the Poll Everywhere website or share the URL.
Due to ongoing issues, we have disabled the Poll Everywhere Canvas integration. If you need to sync Poll Everywhere results to the Canvas gradebook, please contact canvas@pobox.upenn.edu.
Recommended Practices
Instructors should be aware of a few considerations before using this tool.
Activities unpublished by default
Activities are created in an unpublished state. You will need to manually activate and publish an activity to collect responses.
Slideshow presentations
Poll Everywhere supports a variety of slideshow presentation software integrations.
For optimal performance:
- Older PowerPoint files may not display correctly when using the Poll Everywhere app. Ensure that PowerPoint is up-to-date and that your slides are in .pptx format.
- Start PowerPoint on your computer first before attempting to open the .pptx file containing a poll.
- [Zoom Users] You must share your entire screen for participants to view your activities; sharing the PowerPoint application only will not display your activities.
- [In-Person Classroom Users] Presenter mode will not work unless you use force monitor selection for Poll Everywhere in PowerPoint for MacOS. For assistance, please contact Classroom Technology Services.
Sharing activities with your teaching team
To collaborate and share polls with others, consider using Poll Everywhere Teams. To set up your team, contact canvas@pobox.upenn.edu with the team members’ PennKeys.
Preparing students
If you will be collecting Poll Everywhere response data for participation, grading, or attendance in a course, provide your students with these instructions in advance to facilitate their login process:
- Log into Poll Everywhere using your Penn email in the format yourPennKey@upenn.edu (school affiliation must be removed!).
- Click Next.
- Select Login via University of Pennsylvania.
Students must log into each poll with the same email address for their responses to be tracked with their names. Alternatively, you may create accounts for them ahead of time by importing a CSV file.
Additional Resources
Getting Help
Contact Poll Everywhere Support or submit a request to canvas@pobox.upenn.edu.