Polling
Why use polling tools?
Using online polling tools like Mentimeter and PollEverywhere can make your teaching interactive, inclusive, and student-centered. Whether teaching in the classroom or remotely, instructors can add polling activities to lectures to engage students, test their knowledge, demonstrate difficult concepts, and facilitate discussion. Live polling results help the instructor adjust lessons to students’ real-time needs.
What can I do with them?
Some examples of the polling tools faculty can use are Mentimeter, PollEverywhere, and Zoom. These tools offer a range of slide types such as multiple choice/open-ended questions, Question & Answer, word clouds, and media. The polling tool will instantly generate live visualizations of anonymous student responses.
Instructors can also use polling tools to:
- Take a “temperature check” at the beginning of class to gauge the mood of students
- Create icebreaker activities
- Have knowledge checks (e.g. identifying an element on an image, collecting data points on graph)
- Facilitate group discussions
- Visualize concepts
- Host Q&A sessions
- Review course material with students
- Assess teaching methods
You can compare these tools using this comparison chart.
How faculty use polling
Biology
Professors Chan and Bertke both use Mentimeter to engage students in their large courses.
Physics
Professor Patrick Johnson discusses how he uses polling in a short video clip.
EDM
Professor Tracy Friend uses Mentimeter to break the ice at the start of class.
Get started
Zoom
Before your Zoom session, you can create polls in the Zoom web portal for your meetings (instructions). You can also add questions during the meeting. You have the option of making a poll anonymous and allowing for a single-answer response or multiple selections. To launch a poll during a Zoom meeting, you must first be logged in as the host.
Mentimeter
Using your GU NetID account information, you can sign up and create a free account at www.mentimeter.com. There is no limit on the number of presentations or number of students. If interested in using Mentimeter frequently throughout the course, please reach out to CNDLS for a consultation to set up a Pro account which provides various additional features.
PollEverywhere
You can create a free basic account at www.polleverywhere.com that can be used to poll up to 40 students at a time. Students typically respond anonymously and don’t require Poll Everywhere accounts. For larger classes, you can purchase an instructor license with additional features and the ability to poll up to 700 respondents. Alternatively, you can have students purchase an individual license.