polling request

0 Likes
(4)

Instant polls are great conversation starters in class. Instead of using outside tool it would be great to have a quick question thrown into a module as a poll or even on the discussion board. This would be ungraded and students would be allowed to see results but the results would be anonymous. 

 

🔎 This idea has been archived. While this idea isn't open for comments, it is an important part of Instructure’s idea conversations and development process. Contributions like this are valuable as Instructure prioritizes work on new or existing features.

94 Comments
mpeercy
Community Novice
It would be great to include a polling option within Canvas (in Discussion board, Announcements, on front page, in Collaborations?) somewhere to enable students to vote or choose something (this could be binary - yes/no type options, or multiple choice options). For instance, I won't see my students again in class until next week and I'd like to use Canvas to have them vote on 1 of 3 choices about how we will focus our class time next week. Canvas would be a great place to house that poll and view results. Thanks.
Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

As a work-around, could you create a short ungraded survey (via Quizzes) that would accomplish the same thing?

kmeeusen
Community Champion

One of the things I like to do is use an embedded Google Form for a poll, and then also embed the results spreadsheet. This becomes a live tool, with student responses instantly reflected in the spreadsheet. Handy for flipped or simply web-enhanced courses where you might like to poll the room. Also good for capturing student responses in a fully online course.

I find this better than using an ungraded survey, because it is much easier to display the results to the students when you wish to.

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

Hi Megan,

As Chris mentioned, ungraded surveys are designed, in part, to collect this sort of feedback.  Many instructors choose to create ungraded surveys and then link to them on the home page, in an announcement, etc.  Would this meet your needs?

Thanks

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thanks for your feedback,  @mpeercy ​. It looks like this idea has already been submitted and archived: (with a response from product teams). Usually, re-submission of an archived idea moves forward unless there is a comment from Instructure providing more detail as to why or why not the idea will not be implemented in the near future.

Please follow the other idea to stay up-to-date with future comments related to this idea.

Smiley Happy

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hi  @mpeercy ​. After further review and some discussion, we feel this idea is significantly different enough to warrant moving forward in the voting process. Sorry for any inconvenience. This idea will be open for vote in the next voting cycle (Dec. 2). Smiley Happy

kroeninm
Community Champion

I use this method too  @kmeeusen ​!  The quick results and check of the pulse of students so that they too can see the results is useful online.  I like to encourage this method in each module versus as a more formal survey but usually it's a bit more work than faculty like to setup.  I miss out on using Canvas Polls by working strictly on online courses Smiley Sad

- Melanie

biray
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. December 2, 2015 - Wed. March 2, 2016.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

dusty_parrish
Community Novice

Haven't used it in a while, but www.polleverywhere.com was pretty awesome. Updates quickly and low bandwidth. Wonder if you could just "embed" something google oriented within Canvas to solve the problem?

mcdowela
Community Novice

I do NOT want to create a poll with an App that requires my students (or me!) to download apps onto their phones/devices, nor do I want to create a poll through  an app.  I don't like the ungraded survey as a workaround, nor does the discussion "like" feature meet my needs.  I've seen the suggestions for embedding something, but that still requires students to create an account or log into an external site. I try to be careful about how many places my email address is floating around in cyberspace.

Polling is such a common and important feature of most courses when you want student feedback on various topics. It's absolutely bizarre that this isn't a regular part of the standard Canvas options!  I never use many of the other ones, but I would use Polls almost constantly.  PLEASE add this feature!!

kroeninm
Community Champion

Exactly  @mcdowela ​. If you want to track which students have answered a poll, having them login is needed in any solution right now other than Ungraded Surveys.


As an FYI in case it helps in the interim, if you embed a Google poll or one of the other free polling tools (poll everywhere, etc), if you don't mind anonymous responses, students can complete the poll, the instructor can view the results, and students do not have to create a login!  You just lose the tracking option of who has completed the poll. 

For us at my school, we have Google as a university installation so thankfully we have either option as students are already logged into Google through our authentication when they are logged into Canvas and it doesn't require a separate account creation so there are not any additional privacy concerns. 

- Melanie

jbrady2
Community Champion

Perhaps I am not understanding the request, but I do not see why, as others have stated, an ungraded quiz/survey in Canvas would not serve the purpose. If the idea is to have the students perhaps read something in a text or on a page in Canvas and then poll them about what the feel they need help understanding, I would think that a Canvas survey would work perfectly for this, and it could be linked to from the page containing the weekly content.

rjr
Community Novice

Jeffrey,

For me the difference is the level of complexity. I think of a Poll as: single question, able to be embedded, possibly with instantly view results. It's a quick response potentially within a discussion post or announcement. I think of an ungraded survey as something more complex and a separate tool.  Yes I can use the survey but it's a different type of thing. For example, In the image Follow this link feels different than click to choose:

John2016-02-04 09_14_15-BoardGameGeek _ Gaming Unplugged Since 2000.png

jbrady2
Community Champion

 @rjr ​ The image helped; I now have a better understanding of what you are looking for, and I agree that for a quick response to a question, your example would be the ideal. I know that I have seen radio button examples in the Canvas Styleguide, so it should be possible to embed something like what you have illustrated into a page, but it almost certainly, at this point, would also require tweaking of the underlying javascript, which does not help at the instructor level, so hopefully this idea will move forward. Voted up.

Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

What about using the Polls mobile app?  Mobile Guides - Polls for Canvas  Of course, I realize that people would need a smart phone or tablet to use this app...but maybe it is a possibility for some?

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

Hi Chris,

One downside to that idea is that there isn't a way to surface poll results in the course environment or tie them to the course record.  Good idea, though.

Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

Oh!!!  Makes sense...thanks for the extra info, Scott!

mcdowela
Community Novice

Thank you for the image!  This is precisely the type of poll I want to be able to create. And no, I don't want to have to download an app or have my students download apps. I want to be able to create ones just like that on my computer.  Again, thanks for the image!

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Andrea:

I use Google forms for this purpose all the time. Simply create a Google Form for your poll, grab the embed code for the form and embed the form on a Canvas page. You can then use a free online iFrame generator (Online iFrame Generator - iFrames Generator) to create the embed code for the Google Response form, and embed the response form right below the Poll form on the same page.  The resulting Canvas page will look like this.............

166230_pastedImage_1.png

I hope this helps,

KLM

mcdowela
Community Novice

Thanks for the suggestion. I've seen that before and it looks good. But I don't want to have to go to Google forms and embed stuff. This really should be a common feature available on Canvas!  🙂