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This site provides step-by-step instructions for staff on how to use instructional technologies such as Blackboard and University of Galway digitally enhanced classrooms.

Polling in Blackboard Collaborate Ultra

“Polling” Your Audience

There are a few different ways you can quickly poll your audience on fixed answer questions.

Raising Hands

If you wish to ask a quick “show of hands” type question to your audience, you could ask them to use the “Raise Hand” button that appears at the bottom middle of all user’s Collaborate screens.

Moderators can see which users have their hands raised in the Attendee panel. Participants with raised hands will cluster at the top of the list allowing a quick tally.

NB: You can “pop out” the Attendee panel so that it’s always visible on your screen.

Hand raises are not captured in the recording, so if you wish to retain the results, screenshot them or announce them out verbally for the benefit of the recording.

Polling

Moderators (but not presenters) can start live polls within a Collaborate Ultra session. These polls come in two types “yes/no” or “multiple choice”. You’re given the option to type in question and answer text that your audience can see.

To start a poll, open the Collaborate Panel (purple button, bottom right of screen), go to “Share Content” and pick “Polling”. If you cannot see the polling option, you’re likely not set as a moderator in the room, you can ask an existing moderator to promote you.

Once the poll is running, it will appear as a pop up at the bottom of all attendee’s screens and allow them to click on the desired answer to “vote”. Moderators can then display the results to the room by clicking “show responses” (which will stop further responses being collected). Click the square “stop” button to end the poll.

Moderators can use the Attendees panel to see which attendee voted what way.

Unfortunately polls cannot be built in advance in Collaborate.

Also, polls are also not recorded, but as of June 2020 a poll results report is available after your session for your reference:

Status Feedback

Collaborate has a “real time feedback” tool which anyone can use to quickly show how they’re feeling. This can be used to generally feedback on the session (“it’s going too slow!”, “it’s going too fast!”, “I’m confused!”) but can also be used to respond to questions posed. The “feedback” displays for 30 seconds, and then automatically expires and disappears.

The feedback pane is accessed by clicking on the “My Status and Settings” button (your avatar) that appears towards the bottom of the screen, next to the mute/unmute mic’, share/unshare camera and raise hand buttons. Click on an icon in the feedback pane to give it as feedback. The feedback will appear in a number of places (for 30 seconds):

In the text chat pane, next to any text you’ve typed there
In the attendee’s panel, both next to your name and summarised totals at the top of the pane

NB: You can “pop out” the attendee panel so that it’s visible at all times. As a moderator or a presenter you can click on the feedback summary icons at the top of the attendee panel to filter the attendees by their response type (eg. click on happy face to see all who have responded with it).

Please note that real time feedback doesn’t appear in Collaborate recordings, so screenshot it if you want to retain it, or verbally mention any feedback appearing for the benefit of the recording.

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