Poll Everywhere

On this Page

• Overview
• Access Poll Everywhere
• Considerations for Successful Use of Poll Everywhere
• Instructions
  • Create an Activity
  • Share Activities
  • Use Poll Everywhere in Canvas
• Additional Resources
• Getting Help

Overview

Poll Everywhere is a web-based polling tool that accepts responses via text message, web browser, or mobile app–no clickers required! This tool is available to all instructors at the University of Pennsylvania under a University-wide license.

Learn more about polls, surveys, and other activity types.

How Does It Work?

Instructors, TAs, or staff create a poll in their Poll Everywhere account (navigate to Access Poll Everywhere to request an account). Once an activity is published, students can respond to activities through text messages or a response link. Activity results appear in customizable formats (graph, bar chart, word cloud, etc.). Reports can be run to manage and review participation, responses, and grading.

How Can I Use it?

Poll Everywhere can be used in a variety of ways to increase student engagement, assess student learning, and facilitate course management:

• In-person, online, and hybrid learning.
• Synchronous and asynchronous activities.
• Assessment (diagnostic, formative, summative, low-stakes).
• Course management (attendance, grading, reporting).

Access Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere accounts are available to all Penn faculty and staff. Students should refer to the Poll Everywhere for Students guide. To request a University-licensed account, contact your Local Support Provider or submit a request to canvas@pobox.upenn.edu. 

If Poll Everywhere is being used in a course, students do not need to request an account. Students will receive an invitation through the Canvas integration or URL provided by the instructor. For more information, see Poll Everywhere for Students.

The University license to Poll Everywhere offers these additional features:

• Unlimited poll responses.
• Live moderation of incoming responses.
• Create and export reports.
• Restrict responses to registered participants (see Sync Activities in Canvas for more details).

Considerations for Successful Use of Poll Everywhere

While Poll Everywhere has many great features, there are a few considerations that instructors should be aware of prior to using the tool:

• Activities are created in an unpublished state. You will need to manually activate (i.e., publish) an activity in order to collect responses.
• Using Poll Everywhere in slideshow presentations:
  • If you are using Poll Everywhere in PowerPoint and sharing your content via Zoom, you will need to share your entire desktop and not just the PowerPoint application. Activities will not display to Zoom participants if only the PowerPoint application is shared.
  • If you have your PowerPoint slides on a USB drive, start PowerPoint on the classroom computer, then open your .ppt file. This is also a good practice to follow when working with classroom Macs and PowerPoint or Keynote.
  • If you are using Poll Everywhere in Powerpoint for MacOS, presenter mode will not work unless you use force monitor selection. For assistance, please contact Classroom Technology Services.
• Using the Poll Everywhere integration in Canvas:
  • When linking activity participation to the Gradebook, it is common for the linked activities to default to 100 points.
  • When tracking student participation in Poll Everywhere, you must restrict activity participation to “Registered Users” or student responses will not be recorded properly and you will receive an error when syncing with the Gradebook. To do this, log in to your activities page and select one of your activities. Click Configure, then select Audience restriction and identity. Under the heading “How do you want to identify participants?” select the radial “Restrict to Registered Participants only” option.
  • If Poll Everywhere prompts students to log in, they will need to use their default email address listed in Canvas, usually this is a Penn email address. Poll Everywhere may request a reset of their password via that email address. It’s important for students to use the default email address listed in Canvas for any Poll Everywhere activity where participation is being tracked, otherwise, they won’t get credit for participating.

Instructions

Create an Activity

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, polls, word clouds, and more.

Learn how to create an activity in Poll Everywhere.

Share Activities

You can use Poll Everywhere in a presentation or in an online meeting. Poll Everywhere will work with Powerpoint, Google Slides, Keynote, Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Zoom. The slide that you use in your presentation or online meeting will have a URL that viewers can go to in order to complete the activity via their phones, tablets, or laptops. 

You can also present an activity directly from the Poll Everywhere website or share an activity URL with participants.

Use Poll Everywhere in Canvas

Poll Everywhere can be used in a variety of ways within a course: 

• Share or embed activities directly (no tracking of student participation; no syncing with the Gradebook; add/embed activities in Canvas or slideshow presentations)
• Sync activities with Canvas (track user participation, sync course roster and activity participation with Canvas, requires integration setup and configuration) 

Share Activities in Canvas

You can use Poll Everywhere in Canvas with or without the integration. Using the Canvas integration allows you to track respondents and sync activity participation. If you do not need to track respondents or sync activity participation with the Gradebook, we recommend using Poll Everywhere without the Canvas integration. 

Regardless of whether you use Poll Everywhere with or without the Canvas integration, there are a variety of options available to share activities in Canvas: 

• Share link in Canvas: Learn how to add a link to content pages using the Rich Content Editor in Canvas. 
• Add link within Modules: Learn how to add a link as a module item.
• Embed in content pages: Embedding activities is a two-part process and may require some basic knowledge of HTML. First, copy the embed code from Poll Everywhere, then paste the embed code in Canvas using the Rich Content Editor.

Sync Activities with Canvas

Using the Poll Everywhere integration in Canvas allows you to sync your roster with Canvas and sync participation with the Gradebook. The integration is useful if you would like to track participation or create a graded activity. 

When using the Poll Everywhere integration to sync activities in Canvas, we recommend working with your Local Service Provider (LSP) to ensure the integration is configured properly. We also recommend creating an ungraded practice activity to ensure the integration is configured correctly and students understand how to participate.

Step 1: Import Student Roster from Canvas

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. We recommend leaving this module unpublished. This module is only for activating the integration, students cannot access your activities from this link.
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 activate 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. Click the Go to Participants page button to confirm the roster imported successfully. Please note, it may take a few minutes for the roster to sync.

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 in the Groups pane on the right side of the page. 

7. To view or sync your course roster(s), click the LMS Courses button on the Participants page. From the LMS Connections page, you can also view the date a course roster was last updated.

8. Students will receive an auto-generated email that they have been added to Poll Everywhere for the course. If students are unsure of their Poll Everywhere login, they can simply reset their password via that auto-generated email.

Now that you have connected your course to Poll Everywhere, you can delete the module used to make the initial connection. Alternatively, you can use the link in this module to quickly access Poll Everywhere. We recommend leaving this module unpublished, students cannot access your activities from this link.

Step 2: Sync Activity Results with the Gradebook

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

1. Start on the Participants page (polleverywhere.com/participants) and select the LMS Course link.

2. From the LMS Connections page, select the desired course. You can create a new Gradebook report, or choose a Gradebook that you have already created for the course.

3. Adding a new Gradebook will put you into the report creation flow. In the side panel, select the Gradebook report and then the activities you wish to include in your report.

4. Review the Gradebook report, and click the Export button at the bottom right when you are ready to export the grades to Canvas. 

5. The popup will walk you through the export or show you errors if something goes wrong. Check to see that the course noted in the popup matches the course you wish to export, Additionally, you will have the option to export the report as Grades or Participation. Make your selections, then click Next. The export will complete in the background.

6. Once the export is complete, navigate back to your course in Canvas and click Gradebook to verify that the new gradebook column for the activity was created.

Additional Resources

• 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).
• Poll Everywhere for Students
• Poll Everywhere Mobile App
• Use Poll Everywhere with the following apps:
  • PowerPoint
  • Keynote
  • Google Slides
  • Slack
  • Microsoft Teams

Getting Help

Please contact your Local Support Provider (LSP) or submit a request to canvas@pobox.upenn.edu for assistance with Poll Everywhere.

Last Updated: 23 May 2022