Quick Start Guide: Poll Everywhere

At a Glance

Poll Everywhere is a web and SMS text-messaging student response system. Use Poll Everywhere to create polls ahead of time and launch in your web browser during class to collect and display real-time responses that students provide with a laptop or mobile device.

In this guide for faculty and teaching teams, you’ll learn how to create a Poll Everywhere poll and deliver it during a class session.

How to Get Support

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere provides end-user support as part of MIT’s Enterprise license. If you have questions about using Poll Everywhere and its features, you can contact them directly by:​

• Email: support@polleverywhere.com​
• Phone: 1-800-388-2039 (Hours: M-F, 5:00am – 5:00pm PST)​
• Web: Create a support ticket by going to https://www.polleverywhere.com/contact or browse their Support Guides by going to https://support.polleverywhere.com/hc/en-us

Information Systems and Technology (IS&T)

Email polleverywhere@mit.edu for any questions related to Poll Everywhere, including:

• Presenter licenses
• Accounts
• Teams

How to Request a Presenter License

A Presenter license is required to use this tool.

• In order to create activities (polls) using Poll Everywhere, faculty, staff, and TAs must first request a Presenter license from IS&T by emailing polleverywhere@mit.edu.
• Please note: You only have to request a Presenter license one time.
• Once granted, anyone with a Presenter license (Faculty, Teaching Assistant, etc.) can login to https://www.polleverywhere.com/ and create and launch a poll.

How to Access

Login to Poll Everywhere

1. Go to https://www.polleverywhere.com/.
2. Click Login.
   👁 Click Login button
   
3. Type your full MIT email address [1] and click the Next button [2].
   👁 Enter email address and click Next button
   
4. Click the Log in with MIT button.
   👁 Screenshot of the Login with MIT button
   
5. Enter your MIT username and password, and click Login.
6. Your Poll Everywhere dashboard where you can create questions, present questions, and perform reporting tasks will appear.
7. To create a new poll, click the + Activity button.
   👁 Image
   

Prepare Your Polling Activities

Create a Poll

Poll Everywhere offers several types of activities you can use to interact with your students, including:

• Multiple-choice polls
• Word cloud
• Clickable images
• Select on map
• Open-ended questions
• Q&A
• Brainstorm
• Rank order
• Survey
• Donut chart
• 2×2 matrix
• Upvote

For step-by-step instructions on creating an activity in Poll Everywhere, refer to Create an Activity.

Choose How Students Can Respond to a Poll

You can control how students respond to your poll. Set a response method by doing the following:

1. In a polling activity, click on the Configure tab in the menu on the right-hand side of the screen.
   👁 Image
   
2. Under the How people can respond tab [1], check one or both of the following options [2] for how you would like your students to be able to respond:
   • Website
   • SMS text messaging
     • Note: Depending on the activity you have selected, the Text Messaging option may not be available.
       👁 Image
       

Tip: All activity types can receive responses via the web, but only open-ended and multiple-choice questions can accept text message responses.

Choose Who Can Respond to a Poll

You can control who is able to participate in your poll:

1. In a polling activity, click on the Configure tab in the menu on the right of the screen.
   👁 Image
   
2. Click on the Audience restriction & identity tab.
   👁 Image
   
3. Under Who can participate, click on one of the following options:
   • Everyone – no restrictions
   • Recommended: Restrict to registered participants only.
     • This requires students to login with this MIT username and password. Choosing this option allows you to see who submitted each response.
       👁 Image
       

Optional – Set a Timer

You can set a timer on an activity to limit the time participants have to respond:

1. In a polling activity, click on the Configure tab in the menu on the right of the screen.
   👁 Image
   
2. Click on Timer tab.
   👁 Screenshot of Timer tab
   
3. Toggle the timer on [1], and enter how long you’d like your poll to remain open in minutes and seconds [2].
   👁 Screenshot of Timer settings
   
   • Once the timer is set, the countdown timer will be displayed in the activity title.
   • The timer will begin to count down when you activate the activity.
     • When the timer hits zero, the polling activity will automatically lock. When the activity locks, the audience can still see the activity on your PollEv.com presenter page, but no more responses will be accepted for that activity.

To learn more about using a countdown timer, refer to the Countdown Timer guide.

Deliver a Poll During a Class Session

1. Login to Poll Everywhere.
2. Click Go to activities.
   👁 Screenshot of Go to activities button
   
3. Click on a poll title to open it.
4. Click Activate to allow responses.
   👁 Click Activate
   
   • By default, questions will remain active for one day after you activate them unless you deactivate the poll manually. You can adjust this under My Settings.
   • You can also use a shareable response link to create and share a permanent response page for a specific activity. This link does not require the poll or survey to be active. This means you can share multiple activities at once to gather information.
5. Click the Present button to enter Present mode.
   • Note: Your poll will automatically activate after clicking the Present button, which will allow your audience to respond to the poll.
   • Tip: The presentation control buttons will fade to the background when you are presenting in Present mode. Click anywhere on the slide to bring them back up.
     👁 Click Full Screen
     
6. Share your screen with your students. Direct students to follow the instructions at the top of the screen to enter their responses.
7. Optional – Share responses live:
   • You can freely toggle between Instructions view and Responses view using these controls while presenting. This allows you to show the instructions, then wait to reveal the results when you’re ready.
   • To display the poll’s instructions and hide any responses, click Instructions.
   • To display your audience’s responses, click Responses.
     👁 Screenshot of the Show Responses button
     
8. Optional – Stop accepting responses:
   • Click the Lock button to prevent students from responding until you unlock it while remaining visible on your presenter screen.
     👁 Screenshot of the Lock button
     

Tip: MIT’s Enterprise license for Poll Everywhere allows up to 1000 responses per poll.

Wrap Up Your Polling Activities

Deactivate a Poll

To stop students from seeing your poll on your Poll Everywhere response page, click the Deactivate button to deactivate the poll.
👁 Screenshot of the Deactivate button

View Responses for a Poll

Poll Everywhere stores your responses for later review. You can review your responses by doing the following:

1. From a polling activity, click on the Response History button in the bottom-right corner.
   👁 Screenshot of Number of Responses
   
2. On this page, you will find:
   • A summary
   • List of individual responses
   • Link to download a spreadsheet (.csv) of the results
   • Link to download a screenshot
   • Show full report

Create a Report of Responses

There are several different report types that can be created, saved in your Poll Everywhere account, or downloaded to your computer.

For an overview of the different report types, refer to the Introduction to Reporting guide.

For step-by-step instructions on creating a report in Poll Everywhere, refer to the Creating a Report guide.

Related Resources

• Tool Overview
• Quick Start Guide
• FAQ
• All Related Resources