What activity types should you use?
1. Competition
Energize any class
Competitions let you create your own trivia contest in minutes. Students earn points for answering questions quickly and correctly, and an animated leaderboard between questions shows everyone who is in the lead. A colorful burst of confetti celebrates the winner at the end.
Examples:
- Let's review Chapter
- How well do you know literature trivia?
- Two Truths and a Lie: Get to know your classmates
To learn more about Competition activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Competition activity guide.
2. Multiple Choice
Fast, formative assessment
Deploy a multiple choice activity every 10-15 minutes to bring attention back to the topic at hand. It provides an instant snapshot of learning, and alerts the instructor when further explanation is required.
One-minute attendance
Multiple choice activities make it easy to take attendance. Designate the correct response, perhaps a word of the day, and allow thirty seconds for students to tap their answers.
To learn more about Multiple Choice activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Multiple Choice Question and Take Attendance activity guides.
3. Word Cloud
Gauge the impact
Before-and-a er activity: Begin with a word cloud activity to collect student impressions of a topic. End with the same word cloud activity to learn how much those impressions have changed in the course of discussion.
Sentiment check
A word cloud is the fastest way to identify prevailing attitudes and opinions about a topic. It can also be used to gradually reach a consensus, the most used word grows larger as discussion continues.
To learn more about Word Cloud activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Word Cloud activity guide.
4. Q&A
Prioritize questions and ideas
The Q&A activity combines an open response question with upvoting and downvoting. Students submit questions or ideas, then rank the questions and ideas others submit. In less than a minute, the instructor can identify top-ranked responses. Because there is no hand-raising, students can ask questions or posit ideas without fear of embarrassment.
Mock leadership panel Q&A
Assign a group of students to play the role of subject matter experts or world leaders. Encourage the remaining students to question them using a class ranked Q&A activity.
Pinned Q&Aʼs are an excellent way to keep a open communication line with your students. Visit our support center to learn more about pinning activities.
To learn more about Q&A activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Q&A and Adding a Pinned Q&A activity guides.
5. Clickable Image
Map answers on a spectrum
When the answer lies somewhere between A and B, a clickable image gives students the freedom to plot their answer anywhere on a continuum. The instructor can upload a grid, number line, x-y axis, or any image to collect responses.
Practice medical diagnosis
Upload a diagnostic image and prompt students to pinpoint the abnormality on their own devices. The clickable image activity allows the instructor to designate correct and incorrect click regions.
To learn more about Clickable Image activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Clickable Image activity guide.
6. Survey
Quiz students during or after class
If you have a group of activities that you would like to turn into an asynchronous quiz, you have the option of turning it into a Survey.
To learn more about Survey activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Survey activity guide.
7. Open-ended
Keep an open backchannel
Leave an open-ended activity running in the background, so students can quietly raise questions and comments without interrupting the flow of instruction. Instructors typically receive more questions, and more honest questions, through an open backchannel than they receive through hand-raising.
Hold a silent discussion
Give students the prompt or question to discuss, then watch their responses appear together on the screen. As they see the ideas populate, students o en become emboldened to speak out loud, when they would otherwise keep silent.
To learn more about Open-ended activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Open-ended activity guide.
8. Rank order
Reorder ideas or topics
A rank order question allows students to drag a set of options into the desired order. It can be used to rank options by preference, chronologically, by priority, or any order the instructor assigns.
Rank for impact
Ask students to evaluate cause and effect by ranking a list of forces or events by the magnitude of their impact on a culture, era, or historical movement.
To learn more about Rank order activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Rank order activity guide.
FAQs and Common Challenges
Branding the response page is a great way to customize your activities to match your institutionʼs colors. This helps enhance the studentʼs participation experience and makes your presentation more personalized in the classroom.
The Activity settings give you control over several handy features. Through this portal, you can do things like create a template, determine how long you want activities to stay active, and even change the language of activity instructions.
To learn more about adjusting your activity settings, see Poll Everywhere's official Activity Settings guide.
Moderation is available for all free text activities (open-ended, word cloud, and Q & A). The moderation tool allows you to censor responses with inappropriate language and even emojis.
To learn more about the Moderation Feature, see Poll Everywhere's official Moderation Feature guide.
If you have a large batch of questions you typically ask in-person throughout the year, you can import these using a CSV file to quickly create activities.
To learn more about importing activities, see Poll Everywhere's official Import guide.
Asynchronous learning is a major part of distance learning, which means you may need to leave an activity active even a er your live lecture. If so, you can set a default activation period for all activities.
To learn more about Activation Periods, see Poll Everywhere's official Activation guide.
If you find yourself using the same visual settings for many activities, you might consider creating a template activity. Creating a template activity will apply the same visual settings from that activity to all of your activities, creating a cohesive participant experience.
To learn more about creating templates in your Poll Everywhere account, see Poll Everywhere's official Template Activity guide.