How can I poll my students with Zoom?

One effective way to get immediate student feedback is to poll your students during class. Zoom has a built-in polling tool you can use to pose questions to your students and get real-time feedback on their responses. To use Zoom polling, you must first enable it in your Zoom settings. You can then prepare poll questions in the Zoom meeting room in advance of the class session.

How to enable Polling for your Zoom account

Open your "Settings" page on tufts.zoom.us

  1. Log in at https://tufts.zoom.us/profile/setting
  2. Click on "In Meeting (Basic)"
  3. Scroll down to find the "Polling" setting and click the switch to enable

Now when you start a Zoom session as host you'll see the "Polling" button in the Zoom control toolbar.

How to Create poll questions in advance

Although it is possible to create questions "on the fly" during your Zoom sessions, we recommend setting them up ahead of time.

Open your scheduled meeting on tufts.zoom.us

You can only add questions to a meeting that you have already scheduled, meaning that you need to create the meeting and save it before adding polls. Because the options for editing polls are better on tufts.zoom.us, we recommend setting up your polls there even if you scheduled your meetings through Canvas.

Click "Add" in the polling section a the bottom of the page

Scroll to the bottom of the meeting page and click "Add" in the box where it says "You have not created any poll yet."

Add questions to the Poll

  1. Give your poll a title
    • NOTE: a "Poll" in Zoom can have multiple questions. Multiple questions will be shown simultaneously when the poll is launched.
  2. Enter the question prompt
  3. Enter two or more answer choices (question can be single or multiple answer)
    • Answers cannot be designated "correct"
  4. Click "+ Add a Question" to add more questions to the poll
  5. Click "Save" when done

Create more polls as needed

Click "Add" to create more polls. The polls you create will be listed at the bottom of the meeting page. Polls can be edited or deleted later.

How to launch polls during a Zoom meeting

Click the "Polling" icon in the Zoom meeting controls

NOTE: You must be the host to have access to the Polling features.

Select the Poll you want to launch

Click on the poll title at the top of the window to select it (if you created more than one poll for the meeting).

Click "Launch Poll" after selecting the poll.

NOTE: if a Poll has multiple questions they will be displayed simultaneously.

View the poll responses as they come in

The top of the poll window will turn green when the question is launched and a timer will show how long the question has been upen. You can also see how students have responded on the chart.

Click "End Poll" to close the question.

Share the poll results with your students

If you want your students to see how they responded, click "Share Results".

Close the poll or launch another

If you want to end the poll, click the red "close" button in the upper left-hand corner.

If you want share another poll, click the Polling button to open the list of polls.