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Polls Overview

Polls are for quick, live questions during class. You write one question with a fixed list of choices, open the poll, project the QR code, and watch a bar chart fill in as students answer. Polls are not graded and are not tied to assignments.

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Key Features

  • Fast creation: Write the question in the visual builder, or paste a JSON payload
  • Two question types: Multiple Choice and Single Choice, both offering a fixed list of choices
  • Live bar chart: One horizontal bar chart of responses per choice, updating as answers arrive
  • Presentation mode: A fullscreen view of that chart for classroom projection, with the QR code in the corner
  • Manual closing: A poll stays open until you close it
  • Anonymous or signed in: Choose whether students must log in to answer
Polls are a course feature flag. When Polls is turned off under Course Settings → Feature flags, the Polls menu entry disappears for students and staff alike, though direct links to poll pages still work.

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Use Cases

Polls work well for:
  • Comprehension checks: See whether the room follows a concept before you move on
  • Discussion starters: Gather opinions and use the split to open a discussion
  • Feedback: Ask about pace or clarity mid-lecture
  • Concept voting: Let students choose which topic to cover next
Polls are not an attendance tool. Even with Require login to respond turned on, the results page shows only the count per choice. There is no roster, no respondent list, and no export, so you cannot tell from the interface who answered.
Every poll in a course shares one link, https://<your-pawtograder-host>/poll/<course_id>, and that link always serves the poll that was opened most recently. The QR code encodes the same link. Open one poll at a time. If two polls are live at once, students who scan the code reach the newer one, and the older poll has no link of its own to hand out. This is a known issue with an open report against Pawtograder, and a fix is on the way.

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Polls vs Surveys

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Getting Started

Choose Polls from your course navigation to reach Manage Polls, the list of every poll in the course. From there you create polls, open and close them, and open a poll’s results page.
Creating, opening, closing, and deleting polls is limited to instructors and graders in that course. Graders have the same poll permissions as instructors.
Running your first poll takes eight steps:
  1. Choose Polls in your course navigation, then click + Create Poll
  2. Click Open Visual Builder, enter your question prompt, pick Multiple Choice or Single Choice, and add your choices
  3. Click Use This Poll to write the question back into the Poll Question JSON field
  4. Optionally click Preview Poll to see the student view
  5. Decide whether to check Require login to respond
  6. Click Publish Poll, which opens the poll immediately, or Save as Draft to open it later
  7. Open the poll’s results page, project the Answer at: link and QR code, and click Present for fullscreen
  8. Click Stop Poll when you are done collecting responses
See Creating Polls for the full flow and Poll Visualizations for what the results page shows.