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Poll Everywhere: Quick Start

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Poll Everywhere is a live audience response system that allows you to ask a question that’s displayed on-screen, gather results in real-time, and view them as they come in. Poll Everywhere can be embedded into tools like Powerpoint, Google Slides, or Keynote presentations and can be integrated into Blackboard. Additionally, Poll Everywhere can be set up to accept audience responses in both synchronous and asynchronous settings. This article explains how to get started.

  1. Request a Poll Everywhere account. If you have already created an account you can still use this form to get your account added to our ACC Enterprise license.
  2. You will receive an email with account confirmation information.
  3. Login to Poll Everywhere and open the activity section. You can create folders for different presentations to keep activities organized.
    This is a screenshot of the "My activities" page from a web-based audience interaction platform, possibly for live polling or engagement activities. In the navigation bar on the left, there are several options such as "My activities," "Shared with me," and "Trash." In the main panel, there are two sections at the top: one displays that there are no currently activated activities, and the other shows there's no pinned Q&A. Below these sections are buttons for "Attendance Management" and "Settings." Below, there is a list of activities with names such as "AI for T&L," "Community Building," "Data Summit," and others. Each activity has a timestamp indicating when it was last modified, and a count of the number of items it contains. This interface seems designed for organizing and managing various activities related to audience engagement, possibly in an educational or training setting.
  4. Select the Activities button and it will open up a screen where you can choose your activity type.
    This is a screenshot of a user interface for creating an interactive activity. At the top, there are icons for different types of activities such as "Multiple choice," "Word cloud," "Q&A," "Clickable image," "Survey," "Open-ended," "Competition," and more. Below, there's a form to create a new activity, specifically a multiple-choice question. The form includes a title field labeled "This is my example question," followed by two options for answers. The first option is "True" and the second is "Fale," which seems to be a typo for "False." There is a button to "Add option" for more potential answers. At the bottom, there is a dropdown menu to "Assign activity to a group," suggesting that the activity can be targeted to specific participant groups. Finally, there are two buttons: one to "Add another activity" and another to "Create" the current activity. This setup allows a facilitator to quickly generate interactive content for engaging with participants, possibly during a live session or workshop.
  5. Enter your question (the title is the question you want to ask) and answer choices (if your selected activity type is prompting answers).
  6. Click create and you will be redirected to the activity page.
    Screenshot of a live polling interface showing a multiple choice question titled 'This is my example question' with two response options, 'True' and 'Fale,' each currently showing 0% as no responses have been submitted. At the top, there is a URL and a QR code for participants to respond, along with options to share, activate, and present the poll. On the right side, a menu includes 'Configure,' 'Test,' and 'Send' steps, with further settings for audience response and timer. There are additional controls at the bottom for instructions, responses, and editing the activity.
    The following link will take you to a guide that explores the different activity types.
  7. You can display an activity right from the Poll Everywhere application but it is more common to use Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Apple Keynotes. Each of these will have a separate plugin that you will have to install on your computer and follow separate directions for.
    Chrome Browser extension for Google Slides
    Microsoft PowerPoint
    Apple Keynote

Best Practices

After using Poll Everywhere, archive the responses to prevent old answers from appearing in future presentations.

Allow participants to skip cookies, registration, and providing names to maintain anonymity and simplicity. Optionally, have students use real names for follow-ups or grading.

Start with a low-stakes icebreaker question and guide participants through the sign-in process multiple times to ensure familiarity before moving on to main questions.

Inform your audience to keep the polling tab or window open during the session, as it will automatically progress to the next question unless navigated away from.

Participants can only respond to polls when the program is in slideshow mode. Test the presentation on a second device before the session and archive any test responses afterward.

Contact Support

This article was created and is maintained by the Office of Academic Technology.

If you have found an error in this article, or if you need assistance incorporating this article into your course, please contact the Educational Technologists.