Zoom has a “Poll” function that allows you to let your students (participants) answer multiple choice questions. You can use this during a class similar to Clickers to obtain feedback on the students’ understanding and attention. You could also use it as a way to quiz your students since the answers can be recorded identifiying each student.
Follow these instructions to use Polling in your Zoom meeting:
Settings
- Make sure to enable Polling in your Zoom settings.
Go to https://union.zoom.us/profile/setting, scroll down to [Polling], and click the button to enable Polling.
- After creating a meeting, go to your online meeting menu: https://union.zoom.us/meetings.
- Click on the meeting title where you want to add a poll.
- Scroll down to the bottom and click on the
[Only this meeting] button.
- Note: If this is a recurring meeting, you must allow Polling for [All] meetings.
- You must make Registration required by checking the box under the meeting time settings.
- Scroll to the bottom and click on the blue [Save] button.
Creating Your Poll
- Once back at the meeting description screen, scroll to the bottom and click on the [Poll] tab and then click on the [Add] button in the right corner.
- A popup window opens where you can type in a title and your question with answer choices that the students can choose from.
- [Single Choice] will only allow one answer, or you can allow multiple choices from your list by selecting [Multiple Choice].
- You can also check [Anonymous], in which case the identity of the respondents is not connected to their answers.
- Don't forget to click to blue [Save] button to save your polling questions.
You can add more questions to the same poll or save and add more polls. During the “meeting”, you can choose which poll to activate, but the students will be able to answer all questions on a single poll at a time. For example, if you have different questions for different times during your lecture, you should make and individual poll for each question.
- The polls show up on the bottom of the meeting page.
- Click on the [Polls] tab.
- From the Polls tab, you can click the [up arrow] beside the name of your poll to toggle viewing the questions.
- To the right of the Poll title, click on the [Edit] button to go back in and edit your questions.
Now you're ready to go to your Zoom meeting!
Starting Your Poll During a Zoom Meeting
- During your lecture/meeting, click on the [Polls] icon in the zoom navigation bar at the bottom of the Zoom window. Don't forget to Share Screen!
- In the popup window, choose which poll you'd like to use by using the drop down menu. The questions and answers of the selected poll are shown to you.
- Click the blue [Launch Polling] button at the bottom to send the questions to your students.
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- A timer will start.
You'll be able to see how many participants already submitted their answers and the answer spread.
You can end the polling by clicking on the blue [End Polling] button at the bottom.
Your students will see something like this for the 2 questions in our poll example:
(Screenshots from a phone)
- The students are able to navigate by using the [Next] and [Previous] buttons.
- When they're finished, they just need to touch the [Submit] button.
- After ending the poll, you can share the overall results with your students but clicking on the blue [Share Results] button.
If you don't wish to share the resuts, just click the X in the upper right corner to close the window.
Getting a Report for your Poll
You can get a report of individual student answers to use it as a quiz or other assessment options.
- Go to your online account, union.zoom.us/account/report.
- Click on [Reports] in the left sidebar menu.
- Click [Meeting].
- Click [Poll Report].
If your meeting doesn't appear, enter the correct date range for your meeting and [Search], then click [Generate] for the specific meeting.
- On the next page, click [Download] next to the meeting where you want the poll results.
Note: It can sometimes take over 30 minutes to fully populated the results for your download. If you download a report and it's empty, [Generate] and [Download] again at a later time.
The report is a simple cvs file that includes the names and emails of the participants along with the questions and their answers to the polls. If a question has multiple answers, those will be separated by semicolons .
If you are having difficulty or you have unanswered questions, please contact the Help Desk through the ITS Service Catalog or call (518) 388-6400.
Information attributed to Boston University