Poll Everywhere (Faculty)

Overview

Poll Everywhere is a third-party tool that can be integrated with your Blackboard course. It is an online audience response service that instructors can use to ask students a question, collect their responses and share the results with the class. Respondents can answer the question using their mobile phones, Twitter, or web browsers. Both the question and the students’ responses are displayed live in Keynote, PowerPoint, and/or on the web.

Using Poll Everywhere with Blackboard

(1) Request a Poll Everywhere user account

To begin using Poll Everywhere as an instructor, you will need to be sent an invitation. Note: If you already have an account, skip to #2.

  • Viterbi instructors: Please submit an Instructional Software Request (ISR) on myViterbi webportal, https://myViterbi.usc.edu/ specifying for which term, class and section you wish to use Poll Everywhere, and the rationale for the request.  If approved by your program/department and by Viterbi IT, Viterbi IT will communicate with ITS to send you an invitation.
  • All other instructors: Please email the USC Blackboard Support Team (blackboard@usc.edu) to request Poll Everywhere that includes an acknowledgement from your department’s head that your department will be charged $3.50 per responder per year.

(2) Link your Blackboard roster

(New instructions, as of Summer 2021) To link your Blackboard course roster with your Poll Everywhere account roster you will need to create a Poll Everywhere content item in your Blackboard course.

  1. Navigate to a content area (Syllabus, Content, Assignments)
  2. Click on Build Content->Poll Everywhere.
  3. A Create Poll Everywhere page will display.
  4. Name the item.
  5. Change Permit Users to View to NO
  6. Submit
  7. This will allow you to create a Poll Everywhere tool which will allow you to sync your Blackboard course and Poll Everywhere rosters.  You can use this to sync your roster often to make sure capture any new enrollments.

Once you have created your Poll Everywhere content item you will need to link your Poll Everywhere and Blackboard account to sync your rosters. To do that, follow these steps.

  1. Click on Poll Everywhere content item.
  2. Click on blue button that says “Continue to developer.blackboard.com”.
  3. Click on sync roster.

Once your rosters are synced, a new Poll Everywhere profile will be created for each student who did not already have a Poll Everywhere account. The students who did not already have an account will receive a notification email with a link to change their password.

The Poll Everywhere content item is also used to resync your roster. Use the re-sync in the Poll Everywhere option whenever you have a new student added/dropped from your course. The re-sync option will capture any new enrollments. Syncing will not overwrite previously imported students. It will simply add students who were not yet in your Poll Everywhere class.

(3) Create your polls

Please note: You will need to go to https://www.polleverywhere.com/ and log in to your account in order to create polls. Written instructions for creating a poll or activity are on this page: Create an activity

Training and Support

Tutorials

Webinars

Poll Everywhere has scheduled webinars and an archive of past sessions available here: Poll Everywhere Webinars

For beginners, we recommend attending one of the weekly interactive lessons on the basics of how to create a poll, customize polls, insert the slides into Powerpoint, and run reports. Every Thursday at 1pm PST/4pm EST: Getting Started with Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere Technical Support