Polling in Zoom Meetings is a great way to engage students.
Some Faculty members found ZOOM’s polling setup to be confusing. In this post, I perform a “walkthrough” of the process. The official Zoom help page may be of interest (link below).
STEP 0: Sign into Zoom
https://wakeforest-university.zoom.us/
STEP 1: Enable Polling
Polling NEEDS TO BE ENABLED by the faculty member. In the settings of their account below:
Click on SETTINGS in the left navigation pane.
Scroll further down the page, you will find Polling (it needs to be enabled). Slide the switch to blue (enabled). Note there are MANY options, so choose carefully.
STEP 2: Schedule your meeting.
From the meetings navigation button, click Schedule a New Meeting
I like to give the meeting a meaningful title. For simplicity of the example, I used “My Example with Polls”
Make sure to SAVE the scheduled meeting! Scroll down to the bottom of the page and press SAVE button
After you hit save you are transported to the management page for the meeting.
STEP 3: Manage or Modify the Meeting
NOTE: If you don’t see the management window, you may have to click the MEETINGS button on the left navigation tab and select the meeting for the list of meetings.
STEP 4: Add your question.
SCROLL to the bottom of the page
At the BOTTOM of the meeting management page, are the polls. Yes, you MUST add at least one polling question BEFORE any meeting otherwise, the polling button won’t show up. The nice part is that if you DO have at least one question, you can add more during the meeting with the EDIT button (I will show that later in this post)
When you click ADD you get a form to fill in. Note that the Zoom concept of a poll isn’t a single question, but one or more questions. You can have multiple polls in a single meeting.
There’s lots to fill in, but pretty easy to understand… Make sure to press SAVE when done. You may have to scroll down your screen to see the SAVE button.
Now… let’s add TWO questions to our form. Simple “Ice Breaker” questions are a great way to engage your class!
Add the second question– note question 1 editing/delete buttons are here too!
Once it has been saved, it will appear at the bottom of the management window. You can EDIT these, DELETE these, or even ADD more.
STEP 5: Using the poll in a meeting.
When you are finally conducting the meeting there is a new button on the bottom of the screen labeled POLLS
When you click the polls button you pick which polling question you are going to present with a drop down on the top of the dialog box.
STEP 6: Start a Poll
Click LAUNCH POLLING to ask your participants questions. There is also an EDIT button if you change your mind or want to add a question on the fly. Again, a little awkward to do during a meeting, but can be done.
Once it is launched, the instructor will see the live results
STEP 7: End a poll / Share Results
Finally, click END POLLING when you have gotten back your results. The students WON’T see the results until you click on SHARE RESULTS button. You (as the instructor) make a choice of when to SHARE RESULTS by clicking the button.
When you share the poll results, you and your students will see the results window. As an instructor, you could always RE-LAUNCH the poll if you want to revisit a question later in your lecture!
One thoughtful feature of Zoom is that the results of the poll are saved into the meeting details screen so you can review later or post to your classroom LMS.
Optional—
ADDING AD HOC QUESTIONS…
If during a meeting you wanted to add a new poll, click on the POLLS selector on the bottom of the meeting screen.
Then click the EDIT button in the existing poll window. Then fill in the new polling question, adding more questions too if you like.
Your window will switch to the management of your current meeting and like before, fill in all applicable boxes– And finally the SAVE button on the bottom.
When you are done, a new Polling question is available for use.
Congratulations, you now should know how to use the Polling tool in Zoom!