OPT (Online Polling Tool)
Instructors of larger classes may wish to quickly ask all students a question during class to gauge understanding. The OPT, which can be integrated with a CCLE course, can be used for this purpose.
Connecting OPT To Your CCLE Site
Go to your CCLE course site, and then to the section of the site to which you'd like to add the poll.
Click the orange Turn editing on button in the upper right of the page.
Towards the bottom right, click on the orange button, Add an activity or resource, and a window will pop up in the center of your browser screen.
The first option is Apps; click the button for Apps, and then click the blue Add button at the bottom of the window.
Select Online Polls and an intermediary page will appear with more information about the Opt Online Polls App.
Select the blue Add button near the top of the page. This will add it to your site and bring you back to the section to which you are adding it, where there will now be a link to Online Polls. You will have to agree to OPT’s terms and conditions before using it for the first time.
Once you set this up, all of your polls will be accessible through this Online Polls link, which takes you to your dashboard. Here, you can make polls, open and close them, and see results, among other functions. Your students can click on this same link to participate in polls for this particular class.
Setting Up A Poll
To create a new poll, instructors should click the Create a Poll button in the top menu within OPT.
You will then be taken to a page to create your poll. You will have the following options:
Title – Enter the title of the poll. A descriptive title that lets students easily pick it out of a list of polls is best.
Access – This determines how widely accessible your poll is. By default, polls are not associated with a particular course.
If you want to make a publicly accessible poll not associated with a course, you must enter a password in this section. Passwords must be at least 4 characters long.
If you want to enable the poll only for students in your class, select the “Require login / restrict to course” option. This will display several new options.
Assign Points – If you wish each student to receive a score or grade for their answers in the poll, this option must be selected.
Do not allow multiple responses – If this is selected, each student may answer the poll only once.
Anonymous responses – If this is selected, no names or ID numbers will be associated with the responses to the poll.
Restrict to Class or Group – Selecting this option will display courses of which you are the instructor and for which you have set up OPT. Choose one of these classes to restrict poll access to only students of this class.
Password (optional) – You may enter a password required for users to take the poll. By selecting this, you can keep users from taking the poll until you release the password.
Poll Questions – “Write new question here” is where you enter the question itself. You can several different types of questions: multiple choice with one correct answer, multiple choice with multiple answers, open questions (short and long), true/false, and numbers.
For a true/false question, you must specify whether the answer is true or false in the drop-down menu that appears. You must then specify whether the answer is correct, partially correct, or incorrect, before assigning the number of points for this question.
For multiple choice questions, click “Add Option” to list the answer choices; the red minus sign allows you to delete options. If “Assign Points” has been selected, you must also specify the correct answer(s) and how many points students should receive for each selection.
You may add as many questions as you would like. To delete a question, click the red X that appears to the right of the question. When you are done, click Submit.
You may return to edit a poll from your dashboard by clicking the “Edit” button next to your poll.
Opening Your Poll
At this point, your poll is unpublished. No one except you is able to access it. To allow your students to access it, you must open the poll. First, navigate to your dashboard on OPT. Then, locate your poll under the “Unpublished polls” category and click the “Open” button. You will then have two options: Show Results and Hide Results. The former allows students to see aggregated (but not individual) responses, while the latter allows only the instructor to see any results. These options can be toggled at any time, but once opened, a poll cannot be edited further.
Once a poll is open, your students can access it through their own dashboard or by navigating directly to the poll’s URL. You can find this URL by navigating to your dashboard, locating the poll, and choosing Manage. The URL can be found on the ensuing screen.
You can share this URL with your students, or include a link to it on your course site.
Closing Your Poll
If you want to prevent any further responses to your poll, you can navigate to your dashboard, locate the poll you would like to close, and choose Manage. On the next screen, select Close Poll. Note that this step cannot be undone.
Viewing Results
Please note that OPT does not have Gradebook integration with CCLE or MyUCLA. If you plan to use Opt for graded activities, you will need to enter the scores into your preferred gradebook manually.
Individual Polls
At any time, even before closing the poll, you can view both individual and aggregated poll results. To do so, navigate to the poll’s “Manage” screen as described above. Click on the Poll Responses button. This view, the “Expanded View,” allows you to view aggregated answers in different ways. If showing results is turned on, your students will also be able to access these views.
From this screen, clicking “List” enables you to see individual responses; only instructors have this view.
Finally, the orange “Export” button allows you to download all responses as a .csv file, which can be opened in Microsoft Excel. If you wish to use polls as graded assignments, you will want to download this file so that you can enter the grades into your gradebook of choice.
All Polls for One Class
If you have associated multiple polls with a given class, you can view the results of all polls for your class together. First, click the Manage Classes button towards the top of the OPT dashboard. You will see a row corresponding to each class for which you are using OPT. To download all results for a given class, select “Choose Report” in the drop-down menu, and select one of the options. If you are using OPT for graded polls, you will want to select one of the options labeled “with Points.” Finally, click the blue download button just to the right of this drop-down menu. This will download the data as a .csv file (which can be opened with Microsoft Excel).
Note on Accessibility
Please be aware that, if you are requiring your students to take polls, students will need to have an internet-accessible device in class. Although many students have such devices, it is best not to assume that all students do. Given advance notice, students may borrow laptops from libraries like the Powell Library or the Young Research Library, but please be aware that these are limited in quantity.
Further Documentation
Further information about how to use OPT can be found here.