Poll Everywhere

On this Page

• Overview
• Benefits
• Features
• Instructions
  • How Do I Get Access to Poll Everywhere?
  • Creating Polls & Surveys
  • Using Poll Everywhere in Canvas
• Additional Resources
• How Do I Get Help with Poll Everywhere?

Overview

Poll Everywhere is a web-based polling tool that doesn’t require clickers. This tool is available to all instructors at the University of Pennsylvania under a University-wide license.

How Does It Work?

Instructors, TAs, or staff create a poll in their Poll Everywhere account. The poll is made in an unpublished state. Once a poll is published, students can respond to polls through text messages or the Internet. The poll can be closed manually by the instructor, TA, or staff, or it can be set to close at a certain time. Poll results appear in customized formats (graph, bar chart, etc.). Reports can be run for granular analytics and grading.

How Can I Use it?

Here are some common Poll Everywhere uses:

• Attendance
• Assessment:
  • Diagnostic
  • Formative
  • Summative (minor assessments only [e.g., short quizzes])
  • Student-directed teaching
  • Social learning
• Flipped/Hybrid classrooms
• Online learning

Benefits

The Poll Everywhere license at the University of Pennsylvania grants instructors in participating schools and programs access to the subscription version of Poll Everywhere. 

Poll Everywhere subscription accounts offer these additional features:

• Allows for 10,000 responses per poll (please email canvas@pobox.upenn.edu if you plan to have more than 1,000 for a poll).
• Has the correct-answer display feature.
• Includes reporting.
• Gives the option to create participant accounts, which means that poll responses can be matched with respondents. In a course context, this means that instructors who set up participant accounts for their students can identify which responses came from which student.

Features

Poll Everywhere draws the following distinction between polls and surveys:

• Poll: A single, stand-alone question
• Survey: Series of polls presented in succession

Learn more about the different Types of Polls and Surveys.

Instructions

How Do I Get Access to Poll Everywhere?

To create a Poll Everywhere account, contact your Local Support Provider or submit a request to canvas@pobox.upenn.edu. 

Creating Polls and Surveys

A Poll Everywhere activity is a single question or prompt you pose to your audience. Activities include multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, ranking questions, surveys, and more.

Learn how to create an activity in Poll Everywhere.

Using Poll Everywhere in Canvas

To use the Poll Everywhere integration with Canvas, first make sure your course site is published. 

Syncing Your Student Roster to Poll Everywhere

1. Go to the course that you wish to connect with Poll Everywhere and click + Module, name the module, then click Add Module to save.
2. Within your new module, click the + button. From the dropdown menu of the popup window, select External Tool, then select Poll Everywhere. The URL and Page Name fields will auto-populate below. Lastly, check the Load in a new tab checkbox and click Add Item to save.

3. To launch the Poll Everywhere integration, click on the new Poll Everywhere link that you made within the module. On the page that displays, click the Load Poll Everywhere in a new window button.
4. In the new tab, you will be asked to select an LMS to continue. Select Continue to canvas.upenn.edu. On the next page, click the Sync roster button.
5. The page that loads will inform you that the participant sync is proceeding. Once the sync is complete, click the Go to Participants page button. 
6. From the participants page, you will be able to verify that the sync took place because there will be a new group named after your course.

Exporting Student Grades to Canvas

Once you have collected some poll results from students, you can export those results to Canvas.

1. First, create an assignment by navigating to the Assignments tab within Canvas and click + Assignment.
2. On the next screen, enter a Name for this assignment, then scroll down to the Submission Type fields. In the Submission Type section, select External Tool from the dropdown. Click the Find button, select Poll Everywhere, and click the checkbox to ensure it opens in a new window.

3. On the next screen, click the button with your assignment name to launch Poll Everywhere. Click through the acknowledgement and you will be greeted with a page with two options. Select Create Gradebook for export.
4. Select the poll(s) you wish to include in your Gradebook and click Finish.
5. Once in the Gradebook report, click the Export button.

6. The popup will walk you through the export or show you errors if something goes wrong. Check to see that the class noted in the popup matches the grades you wish to export, and click the Next button. The export will complete in the background.
7. Once the export is complete, head back over to Canvas and click into your Grades center to verify that the new gradebook column was created.

Additional Resources

• Poll Everywhere for Faculty, TAs, & Staff (Create Polls, Present Polls, etc.)
• Poll Everywhere Best Practices for Presenters (Faculty, TAs, & Staff)
• Poll Everywhere for Students
• Poll Everywhere Mobile App
• Use Poll Everywhere with the following:
  • PowerPoint
  • Keynote
  • Google Slides
  • Slack
  • Microsoft Teams

How Do I Find Help with Poll Everywhere?

Please contact your Local Support Provider (LSP) for assistance with Poll Everywhere.

For in-depth information on how to use Poll Everywhere, please consult:

• The Poll Everywhere Instructor Guide: Applies to using Poll Everywhere in courses.
• The Poll Everywhere Presenter Guide: Applies to using Poll Everywhere in non-course contexts (e.g. events)