Zoom Class Polls & Quizzes

The following articles discuss the use of Zoom Polls and quizzes. Zoom is an online meeting tool used for class workshops and tutorials at Southern Cross University.

What are Zoom polls and quizzes?

Zoom provides polling and quiz tools that allow you to create single choice or multiple-choice questions within an online Zoom meeting, while advanced polling adds matching, ranked-choice, short answer, and long answer options. Both of these tools can be used to foster Active Learning in an online workshop or tutorial. 

What's the difference between a Zoom Poll or Quiz?

The most important difference is that Quizzes can have set correct answers for some question types while in Polls, there are no correct responses set. Secondly, Quizzes have eight question types, whereas Polls have two types: Single and Multiple Choice.

Zoom polls and quizzes can be used either anonymously or with student names. Depending on the cohort, purpose, and other factors, you can change these options when creating the Poll or Quiz. A key part of preparation is to determine whether you require names or anonymous responses ahead of class time. After the Poll or Quiz is completed by students, the results can be shared with students and reviewed in-depth after the session.

Zoom quizzes are unsuitable for summative assessment

Please note that Zoom polls and quizzes do not integrate with the Blackboard grade centre, and they are unsuitable for summative assessment.

Getting started with polls and quizzes

Before getting started with Zoom polls and quizzes ensure that your Zoom client is up to date and that advanced polling is enabled in the Zoom settings.

The Zoom Polls and Quizzes functionality during a Meeting is only available if enabled online in the Zoom session settings beforehand.

  1. Sign in to Zoom using the portal https://scuonline.zoom.us/. Click on Sign in and use your SCU credentials.
  2. In the Settings menu type in "polls' to find the settings for polls and quizzes. Ensure that Allow host to create advanced polls and quizzes is ticked.


  3. Now click on Meetings, click on the meeting you wish to create a poll/quiz for, and click Create under the Polls/Quizzes section.


  4. Click on Advanced Polls and Quizzing to make your first poll/quiz. (You can tick Add to polls/quizzes library to use with other meetings.)


  5. Edit the poll/quiz information as required.
    • Click Untitled Advanced Poll to change the title for the quiz or poll.
    • To convert from a poll to a quiz (quizzes have correct answers set) click on the three dots and select Make a quiz and set correct answers.
    • To make responses anonymous click Allow participants to answer questions anonymously.

  6. Click on the question area to edit the details.
    • Click the Untitled Question area to edit the name of that question.
    • To the right of the name of the question, click the drop-down menu to choose the type of question.
    • Click the blank for each choice to enter an answer for participants to select from.
    • Click Add ChoiceAdd Row, Add Column, Add Prompt, or Add Answer (depending on the type of question selected) to add additional answer options.
  7. Click Add a Question to create an additional question.
  8. Click on Save to save the poll or quiz.

During the meeting, all questions under a single poll/quiz will be asked when selected and launched.

The video below provides a quick introduction to Zoom quizzes and polls, and covers the steps for scheduling a Meeting that contains a quiz or poll. This will help you ensure your online settings are correct.

Creating Zoom "Basic" polls

Basic Zoom Polls only offer Single Choice and Multiple Choice Questions. There is no "correct answer" for a poll, so polls are best used for checking prior knowledge and gathering feedback from students.

Be mindful with instructions either in the Poll itself or when giving verbal instructions during a meeting. For example, the Poll question may include instructions that inform students that this Single Choice question only allows one response. Meanwhile, for a Multiple Choice question, you may inform participants that "more than one answer is possible", or "select as many options as you agree with", etc.


Question TypeFunctionExample

1.

Single Choice

to allow for a single response to a question.

Have you started Assessment "X" yet?

Yes - No - Not Yet

2.Multiple Choice

to allow for more than one response to a question.

This will allow students to select multiple options and might be useful for starting a general conversation around the topic of Assessment "X" 

How are you feeling about Assessment "X" on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being "not great" and 5 being "awesome"?
Perhaps you feel somewhere in between, and if so, you can select multiple options.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

The first section of the video below is a guide to creating a Poll online (https://scuonline.zoom.us/) and includes a few examples of questions you may find useful. The second half of the video demonstrates how a Poll is run and the sharing of results with students.

Creating Zoom "Advanced" polls and quizzes

Zoom Quizzes can be used as a formative assessment tool during online Tutorials or Workshops that boosts student engagement and interactivity. Quizzes can be tied to a Meeting ID, used as a Meeting Template or saved to the Polls/Quizzes library. Quizzes can be run anonymously or require the names of attendees, and reports can be generated after the Zoom meeting for review. Create Quizzes following the Getting started with Polls and Quizzes process above.

Two Quiz Points to remember about Zoom quizzes

  1. They are formative only
  2. They can generate named reports (either immediately after running them from Zoom, or from the browser after the Zoom meeting ends)

There are eight question types that can be used for Advanced Zoom Quizzes: 

  • Single Choice
  • Multiple Choice
  • Matching
  • Rank Order
  • Short Answer
  • Long Answer
  • Fill in the blank
  • Rating scale

Example Question Types

For examples of question types and more information about how quizzes can be used to enhance student learning and assessment, please see the following article: Using quizzes to evaluate student learning.

Running polls and quizzes

When you click "Polls" during a meeting, your available polls appear in a drop down list at the top of the window, and you will see the blue "Launch" button at the bottom to the right. Beside it, there are three dots for the submenu. When running a live Poll or Quiz, clicking the three dots gives you the options to "Display questions in a random order" as well as "Show one question at a time", should you wish to concept check after each question, for example.

The polls and quizzes Library

In April 2022, Zoom released an update allowing you to save a library of polls and quizzes to your online SCU Zoom account. Doing this will enable you to save/retain Quizzes/Polls that you have spent time and effort on.

To access the library, login to Zoom and go to the Meetings menu. To the far right, you should see the "Polls/Quizzes" area, where you can create and save polls and quizzes to a library. 

This library of polls or quizzes can be added to any Zoom meeting you are hosting (up to a maximum of 10 polls or quizzes). You can enable and disable each poll/quiz as you wish. A library of polls and quizzes can be easily reused across multiple units or terms.

You can also add a poll/quiz to the library when you are creating or editing one, by ticking the Add to polls library option located under the three dots at the bottom of the screen.

Watch the following video for a guide to using the library function:

Using templates with polls and quizzes 

You can also reuse a Zoom Quiz/Poll (from an existing meeting) by creating a template. and you can edit the templates or future Quizzes/Polls if they require any tweaks.

You can save a quiz/poll to the library by editing it and ticking the Add to poll library option.

Accessing Reports

Once you have run a quiz or poll with students you can run a report to view information about the responses: . The following article provide more information: Zoom Reports: Polls/Quizzes & Attendance.


(Please note - it's better to refer to the Online version rather than export, as it's always up to date)