Poll activity
How to create and use a Poll activity
Terra van der Lugt avatar
Written by Terra van der Lugt
Updated over a week ago

The Poll activity allows you to create a poll where learners answer questions and then view the results from other participants.

How to add a Poll activity to your course

  1. Click + Add new on the bottom left of your course

  2. Under Activities, select Poll

  3. On the Poll activity page, you can edit your title and content to describe the poll.

  4. On the bottom of the page, click Create poll to edit your poll questions.


How to create and edit a poll

Writing a question

Each question has a rich-text editor where you can type your question. The rich-text editor includes bold, italics, underline, text colors, highlight text, hyperlinks, and bulleted and numbered lists. You can also insert an image or media file, insert a math equation in TeX format, or insert a code block.

Question types

The Poll activity supports the following question types:

  • Single select, where learners can select only one option

  • Multiple select, where learners can select multiple options

Writing possible answers

The possible answers can be written using the rich-text editor. The poll editor default is two possible answers. You can add more possible answers by clicking “Add option”.

⚙️Question settings

  • Each question can be marked as optional or required.

  • You can turn on “Randomize answers” which will randomly mix the order of possible answers for a multiple choice question

  • You can duplicate questions or delete questions.

Organizing poll questions

Questions are presented to the learner in order with one question visible at a time. Results are presented to the learner after each question. You can see the question number in the circle on the top left of each question (i.e. “Q1" is Question 1). You can reorder and organize your questions using the drag and drop button on top. You can insert new questions between previously written questions with the "+ Add question" button.

The edits you make to your poll will save automatically, and you can click the Back button on the top left to return to your Poll activity page to set overall poll settings.


💡Tip: Finish editing your poll completely before inviting learners to take your poll. After a learner submits answers, the poll will automatically lock for editing.


The above poll would look like this for learners:


Viewing poll results

Instructors can view the results of the poll by clicking "View answers" on the Poll activity page. Results will be displayed in with percentages and number of learners. See in the example below, 83% of learners, or 5 learners, selected "Dog" as their response.

Learners can view results of the poll after they complete their selection. Learners will view the results of the poll one question at a time. Learners cannot edit their answers after submitting, but they may see the overall results change as more learners submit their responses.


Poll activity settings

On the Poll activity page, click on Settings to adjust the settings for your poll.

Activity settings: Poll questions

You will see the number of questions currently in this poll. As long as learners haven't submitted any answers yet, you can continue to edit your poll here. If learners have submitted answers, your poll will be locked for editing.

If you need to make edits to a poll that is locked, you can view answers and delete each learner's answers. Alternatively, if you already have many leaners who've responded, you could duplicate your Poll activity and make edits to a new Poll activity before any learners submit answers, and then share your new Poll with learners (and delete or hide your original Poll). It is important to note that with both of these options, you would remove all prior learner answers, so you would be restarting your poll data.

Completion & Visibility settings

You can use completion and visibility settings to add specific rules for who can view and access this activity, including setting deadlines and prerequisites. You can see details about these rules here.

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