Poll Everywhere is web-based software that allows instructors to display polls, surveys, or quizzes to their students, collect responses, and display them instantly. You do not need a  special "clicker" or other device. Student participants can respond via their laptop or mobile phone. This document presents a step-by-step guide to creating and presenting polls in Poll Everywhere and describes some of the features that the software offers.

Creating a Poll

1. Select Activities in the left-hand menu bar.
2. Select +Activity.
3. You will be presented with a menu of question types. The main types are:
   
   1. Multiple choice: Standard multiple-choice question.
   2. Word cloud: Creates a word cloud of responses.
   3. Q&A: Audience submits responses and can anonymously upvote or downvote others’ responses (Web voting only).
   4. Clickable image: Audience votes by clicking on an image the instructor supplies (Web voting only).
   5. Survey: Use this option to create a self-paced survey with multiple questions for the audience to complete.
   6. Open-ended: Allows audience members to submit whatever they wish as a response.
   7. Competitions: Competitions is a multi-question activity type that brings out the students’ competitive side. With each response, students earn points for correctness and speed. Between questions, a leaderboard shows the highest scores. Once all responses have been collected for the final question, the leaderboard announces the winner.
      

Entering Poll Questions

Different question types have different settings. This section uses multiple choice questions as an example.

1. Enter the text of your question.
2. Then enter the text of each of the answer choices.
3. To select one or more answers as correct, select the check mark next to the answer(s) to turn it green.
4. To add additional answers, select the blue + Add option button.
5. You can add an image as a question or answer by selecting the image icon.
   

Configuring Questions

1. To control when, how, and by whom responses may be given, use the Configure menu. Selecting this will give you a list of options.
2. How people can respond: If Website is selected, students may respond from any WiFi-enabled device after logging into their accounts. If Text Messaging is selected, students may respond via text message after they have joined the session. Please note that some question types do not support text messaging.
3. Audience restriction and identity: This option allows instructors to restrict the poll to registered participants or open it up to anyone in the world who wishes to respond.  Instructors can also choose to identify respondents by screen name or make them anonymous. Please note that anonymous responses are not easy to recover. Only enable this for a poll if you do not need the students’ identities.
4. Response settings: This option allows instructors to select how many times each person may respond to a poll question and to control whether respondents may change their answers after submitting them.
5. Schedule lock/unlock times: With this option, instructors may schedule a time at which to automatically lock/unlock the poll. This is a great feature to use for flipping classrooms and engaging students outside of the classroom.
   

Testing Questions

1. To test your poll question before presenting it publicly, select Test and then activate the poll (see Presenting a Poll below). 
2. You can then submit a mock response using the emulator on the side to determine whether the poll works the way you want it to.
3. Once you are satisfied you can present it to your class.
   

Presenting a Poll

1. When you are ready to present your poll, go to Activities, then select the name of your poll question. This will take you to the polling page. There are two rows of control buttons.
2. The top row of buttons contains buttons that allow you to change the poll state like Share, Visual Settings, Activate/Deactivate, and Present.
3. The bottom row of buttons contains buttons that you will use during your presentation such as Lock/Unlock, Instruction, Responses, Correctness, and Clear Responses.
   Note: Please note that only one poll question can be active at a time.
   

Folders

You may wish to create a group of poll questions to present together, for example, for a specific course or specific chapter.  To do this use Folders to organize your poll questions together.

1. Select Activities. 
2. A list of your poll questions will appear. At the top of the list, you can create folders by clicking on the +Folder button.
3. Enter a name for your new folder, then click Create Folder.
4. Select the name of the folder to view the contents of the folder.
5. You can create new polls in this folder by selecting the +Activity button while inside of this folder.