Poll Everywhere: Getting Started

Poll Everywhere is an audience response system licensed by GW's School of Medicine & Health Sciences.

Poll Everywhere provides SMHS faculty with several interactive question types including multiple choice, word cloud, clickable image, and open-ended questions. Instructors can also employ Q&A, allowing users to submit questions, and Competition, in which participants compete to answer a series of questions the fastest.

Poll Everywhere allows students to respond to questions synchronously via an app or webpage, and also permits asynchronous responses.

For support in learning how to use Poll Everywhere, please contact:

• Robin Tse (rgwtse@gwu.edu)
• Teddy Hristov (teddy.hristov@gwu.edu) 

Health sciences faculty can contact:

• Laurie Lyons   lbl@gwu.edu
• Linda Cotton    cottonl@gwu.edu

To get started with Poll Everywhere:

SMHS faculty can request a Poll Everywhere account from Teddy Hristov (teddy.hristov@gwu.edu) or Tom Harrod (tph@gwu.edu).

When you receive the emailed invitation, click on the link and register for a Poll Everywhere account.

To use Poll Everywhere with PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, Slack, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, or Zoom:

Download and install the appropriate software extension on your computer.  

• Poll Everywhere for Google Slides is a Chrome extension and only works with the Google Chrome web browser.
• Available via the Software Center on SMHS computers

NEW! Updated Poll Everywhere Interface

On 10/20/23 at 6PM ET, the GW SMHS PollEverywhere account will transition to the updated graphical interface, and all PollEverywhere users should do the following:

1. Open Powerpoint Slides, access the PollEverwhere tab, then login with your PollEverywhere username and password.
2. Select 'Check for updates' and upgrade, if needed, to the latest version, 3.0.9
   • If you are having issues with Step 1 or 2, download and install the appropriate PowerPoint plug-in.
     • For PC: https://www.polleverywhere.com/app/powerpoint/win
     • For MAC: https://www.polleverywhere.com/app/powerpoint/mac
3. Select 'Sync' (to re-sync all your PollEv slides)
4. Use PPT presentation mode to check slides
5. If you note any slides that aren't displaying/working appropriately, insert a new copy of that slide by choosing 'Insert' then 'Activity'; delete the slide that is not displaying/working appropriately.  
6. If syncing and reinserting slides does not work, test your poll from the Poll Everywhere website.  After logging in, access the slide in question then click 'Present' in the upper right hand portion of the window.  

Support

• Contact smhsav@gwu.edu
• GW Poll Everywhere Tutorial
• Test forthcoming PollEverywhere version
  • Use the demo account  Poll Everywhere username and password 
    • Username: test@test.gwu.edu
    • Password: GWUtest101

Poll Everywhere has several different types of polls available for use:

• Multiple-choice polls allow students to choose an answer from a list of responses options (e.g. True/False; A, B, or C). You can also upload images to serve as response options.
• Word cloud displays audience responses as a dynamic word cloud. 
• Q&A allow students to submit responses; students can anonymously agree or disagree with other responses by upvoting or downvoting.
• Clickable image polls allow students to click on an image/map to vote (e.g. click on the state where you attended college). 
• Survey provides for asynchronous responses to Poll Everywhere questions.
• Open-ended polls allow student to submit free text responses to the polls. Open-ended poll responses can be displayed as text wall, word cloud, cluster, or spotlight. Faculty may choose to use Moderation to manage which responses are shown publicly.
• Competition allows the instructor to create a series of questions, then let participants compete to answer fastest.