Today’s Zoom tip – 17 December 2020

For our final tip this year, we are staying with polls and how to set them up in Zoom.

Polls are a great way to engage participants during a Zoom session. They can be one or more questions and the questions take two forms, either single or multiple choice. 

Polls can be created during a live session, however, it’s better to create them in advance. 

Highlighted below are some screenshots which walkthrough the process of how to create a poll in advance, during a meeting, and how to run them when in a meeting.

Creating polls in advance 

To create polls in advance you first need to log into your account on ucl.zoom.us. Your list of scheduled meetings should be displayed.  
 
Click on the name of the meeting that you want to create a poll(s) for – highlighted meetings appear in blue.

This opens the meeting information page. Scroll to the bottom and as shown here, this meeting doesn’t currently have any polls, so click on the ‘Add’ button. 

This opens the poll creation window which is a pop-up.

If the ‘Anonymous? check box is checked, the user information in the poll report will be kept anonymous. 
 
Question and answer fields both allow up to 255 characters and there is no way to specify a correct answer. 
 
The ‘Single Choice’ option allows participants to select a single answer option, whereas the ‘Multiple Choice’ allows participants to select multiple answer options. You will need to decide what type of question will work best. 
 
Polls can be constructed of multiple questions and can be a combination of Single and Multiple Choice. Additional questions are added by clicking on ‘+ Add a Question’.  
 
You can create multiple polls for the same meeting. However, you can only create a maximum of 25 polls for a single meeting. 

Creating polls in a meeting 

You can create or edit a poll in a meeting. If you click on ‘Polling’, it will open the poll window. 
 
If you already have a poll, you will have the options to ‘Launch’ or ‘Edit’. 
 
If you do not have a poll set up, there will be a blank poll with the default title ‘Poll 1’ and an ‘Add a Question’ button, as shown.

Unlike Blackboard Collaborate, you don’t create the poll in the meeting environent itself. Clicking on the ‘Add a Question’ button will open your Zoom account in the browser and the ‘Add a Poll’ pop-up window will appear.  
 
If you choose to edit an existing poll, this will also open your Zoom account in the browser and the ‘Add a Poll’ pop-up Window will appear.
 

Running a Poll in a Meeting 

To launch a poll during a meeting, click on ‘Polling’. The poll(s) you have created will appear. 

If you have a single poll, click on the ‘Launch Poll’ button. If you have multiple polls, select the poll you wish to use, then click on the ‘Launch Poll’ button. 
 
The poll will run until you click on the red ‘End Poll’ button at the bottom of the window. Whilst the poll is running, there is a timer and also information about how participants have answered.  

Upon ending the poll, you are presented with the options of ‘Sharing Results’ or’ Re-launching’ the poll. You can also choose to do neither and just close the poll window.  

Poll responses are stored by Zoom and are available to the Host after the meeting via Zoom reports.
 

Accessing Poll response reports 

The Host of a meeting can obtain a report of poll responses for their meetings via their Zoom account. 
 
Once logged into ucl.zoom.us click on ‘Reports’ in the left-hand menu panel then select ‘Meeting Reports’. 
 
From here you can specify ‘Poll Report’ using the radio buttons and obtain a report for a specific date range; or you can search by ‘Meeting ID’ under the text ‘Report Type’ to access polls connected to a specific meeting. 

Once you have entered the relevant details, click on ‘Search’ and list of corresponding reports will appear. Click on ‘Download’ to obtain the report you want. 

For more information please read the Zoom article on Generating Meeting Reports for Registration and Polling.

This was your last tip for 2020. As always, if you have any feedback or tip suggestions for Teams or Zoom, please let us know at isd-webcomms@ucl.ac.uk. If you need help with either of the products, please email the service desk for assistance with Teams, or zoomsupport@ucl.ac.uk for help with Zoom.

Teams tips and Zooms tips have been brought to you by ISD Webcomms, with special thanks to Edd Charnley and Duncan Cooper for Teams highlights, and Caroline Norris and her team for Zoom contributions.

More coming in the New Year!
 

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