Setting Up Online Polling

• There are two primary options to consider for using polling during your online sessions:
  • Zoom polling:
    • By using this approach, you can create polls in advance of an online session, which you then launch during the session to collect students’ responses
  • PollEverywhere: This is a third party application that you need to create an account to use
    • WashU Olin does have a subscription to this application
    • You should email the CDE to request access to the WashU license.
• We would recommend using PollEverywhere
  • For guidance on using polls with PollEverywhere, see this video
  • Poll Everywhere is also hosting webinars this fall to help faculty prepare
• Additionally, we recommend the following:
  • When using Zoom screen share, you should share the entire desktop (rather than just the PowerPoint application)
• If you want to focus your sharing on just PowerPoint but still want access to the full desktop, you can configure your slideshow to display within a single consolidated window
  • In PowerPoint for Mac, click “Set Up Slide Show” then “Browsed by an individual (window)”

Pros

• Compared to Zoom Polling, PollEverywhere offers the following benefits:
  • Ability to include polls directly in your slides
  • Easy to use polling in hybrid sessions where you may have some students on Zoom and some students in the classroom
  • Wide variety of polling types and options

Cons

• The main disadvantages of using PollEverywhere are:
  • Requires an additional application to be open during your Zoom session
  • Requires students to use either a web browser or mobile device to respond (they are out of Zoom and potentially distracted)
  • Is sometimes a little slow loading polls at the very start of a session
    • To combat this, you can test your polls before starting a class