Noteworthy Non-LMS Poll & Survey Tools
- Matthew Harrington
Analytics
In addition to the LMSes mentioned, there are a number of noteworthy polling and surveying tools that can be used as inspiration for future developments and comparison. In no particular order, these include:
Typeform offers a dynamic, flexible polling experience with a variety of question types. Their polls can contain different media, multiple question steps, and images. They pose a single question on screen at a time, with new questions in sequences scrolling in on submission of the previous question.
Typeform quizzes cannot display results immediately on submission, however, making them less useful for courses than they could be otherwise. They are good for gathering data, but that’s about it.
Poll Everywhere is a tool designed for live business events and classroom training, so it cannot be inserted into courses easily, but it shows how polls can be integrated into presentations and meetings, by providing a way to respond to a live poll. Most relevant to our use-case, Poll Everywhere provides live data visualisations that update in close to real-time, allowing participants to see how everyone is voting, using tools like bar charts, word clouds, and pie charts, as well as supporting competitive activities like competitions.
SurveyMonkey supports online, embeddable polls with a huge range of templates available for common polls.
Jotform provides a simple multi-step interface with a clear, easy to use builder for polls and surveys. They call everything polls, but more accurately they’re surveys, once again demonstrating the difference between them in practical terms is mostly irrelevant to the tool. The editing experience of Jotform is extremely polished, and honestly one of the best out of those I’ve quickly played with.
Google Forms are used widely by educators due to how easy it is to include them in pretty much any context for free, and while their primary purpose is not simply polling, and the utility of these survey forms for educational purposes simply isn’t there by design, they represent a perfect target for functionality for the ideal survey tool for educators, as educators will typically happily use them and recommend their use.