Polling tools are designed for quickly and easily gathering instant feedback. Polling can be a tool for active learning by providing instructors with a way to gauge understanding, conduct short assessments (e.g. quizzes), and make instruction more interactive. Beyond instruction, polling can be a useful tool for student organizations, campus affinity groups, working groups, and more.

Polls are usually best for quick, straight-forward questions; for more complex, multi-question data gathering, see UCI Surveys

Campus Tools for Polling

The campus supports two primary audience response polling tools: Poll Everywhere and iClicker. Both tools offer real-time and asynchronous options as well as integration with the UCI Canvas gradebook. Campus support for these services is focused on instruction, though Poll Everywhere is also available campus-wide, for activities unaffiliated with instruction.

Poll Everywhere is the recommended option because we our campus-wide license means that there is no out-of-pocket cost to students. While iClicker remains available, instructors are strongly encourages to try Poll Everywhere. Given the increasing usage of Poll Everywhere, declining usage of iClicker, and significantly higher cost to students to use iClicker, iClicker base stations will no longer be permanently installed in classrooms, but will instead be available by request as of Fall 2023

(Recommended) Poll Everywhere

Highly flexible, no cost to participants (students or otherwise). Participants can respond via any web-enabled device (laptop, mobile phone, tablet) or via SMS message (secure & private and enabled at instructor discretion).

iClicker

Designed and supported specifically for instruction. Students purchase dedicated remotes for in-classroom use or may participate via any web-enabled device (laptop, mobile phone, tablet) with purchase of an account subscription.

Campus Tools that include Polling

There are a few other campus tools that, while not primarily designed for polling, include polling options.

Other Options

There are a wide variety of polling tools that instructors may choose to use. The following are a few of the many third-party options that do not have formal support or funding on campus, but may be good options depending on your needs:

  • Kahoot!

    https://kahoot.com/
    Game-based quiz and polling tool that is easy to set up and run and designed to be fun!

  • Pear Deck

    https://www.peardeck.com/
    Poll-building tool with Google Slides and PowerPoint integration options.

Just need to take attendance? Consider using the Checkin app from the Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Science.