Few professors have the luxury of small classes where they can have intimate discussions. It’s increasingly common for classes to take place in large lecture halls – some with more than 200 students. It can be hard for professors to gauge how much students are learning during this time, especially when there is a lot of material to cover. Fortunately, you can increase student engagement and evaluate student comprehension through tools like Poll Everywhere.
Poll Everywhere is an essential resource for professors juggling large classes. Whether you are keeping up with 30 students or 100, our interactive Activities make boosting student engagement easier. Here are a few ways to use our tools to improve your lesson plans.
Assess student knowledge before and after class
One of the easiest ways to gauge what you need to cover in your class is pre-tests and post-tests. While students should have foundational knowledge before arriving in your classroom, they might have knowledge gaps that prevent them from learning key information. Pre-tests can highlight what students know (and don’t know), helping you better understand what needs to be covered. These pre-tests can review material that students should have known before enrolling in your course or material covered in the last class period.
Pre-testing requires you to be a little more agile in your lesson plans. You may realize that you need to slow down some aspects of your teaching or revisit course materials you thought students had already learned. However, this agility can help students get more from your lessons. They won’t feel lost because they are missing foundational information.
Post-testing can also help you prepare for the next class. You can evaluate how much students understood from the material. Sending out questions at the end of class can help you and your students reflect on what was discussed.
The Multiple Choice Activity can help with pre and post-testing. You can quickly share a handful of questions to start and end the class. This will give you instantaneous results on what most of your students know. Real-time multiple-choice polls are ideal when juggling large class sizes.
Collect questions mid-lecture and let students upvote
Poll Everywhere can also promote engagement by providing opportunities for students to ask questions without disrupting your lessons. The Q&A Activity is a great tool where students can submit questions when they need clarification or assistance. You can build breaks into your lesson plans to address questions so they don’t overwhelm you at the end, and you don’t have to backtrack too far if you have already moved on to another topic.
One of the unique features of the Q&A Activity is the ability to upvote questions. For example, if a student asks a question that all their peers also have, other students can boost the query. When you review the questions that students have, you will see the most relevant ones first.
This feature prevents you from answering the same question multiple times. It is also ideal for focusing on the most important questions – thus helping the greatest number of students in your large class. If you can’t get to all of the questions your students submitted, you can address them after class or students can visit you during your office hours.
Incorporate visual elements with Clickable Images
Poll Everywhere can also support student engagement in courses incorporating visual elements, including maps and charts. For example, a biology professor can share a Clickable Image Activity where students label different parts of the body. An astronomy professor can ask students to label different parts of the solar system. This allows you to use digital teaching materials while still making them engaging for students.
It can be hard to encourage student participation when you need to give a detailed lecture – especially on topics that aren’t open to debate or opinion, like science and math. Fortunately, through tools like Poll Everywhere, students can still actively engage with the material, further supporting the learning process.
Make class participation part of student grades
Regardless of which Poll Everywhere activities you use, you can use Poll Everywhere to encourage – and require – participation. When participation is part of their grade, students are more likely to show up and pay attention. Instead of passively listening to the lecture, they can actively complete Multiple-Choice questions, submit comments, and add to Clickable Images. This increases their chances of remembering and applying the material to their future careers or studies.
You can also get creative with how you grade student participation. This could be as simple as asking students to submit reflective statements throughout the class or challenging them to participate in games.
One of the main benefits of using tools like Poll Everywhere is that introverted students can still participate. Learners who are too scared to speak in front of an entire lecture hall can still share their insights and reflections through Poll Everywhere. You can see that these students are listening and learning, even if they don’t talk much.
Digital participation is also helpful for hybrid classrooms. Both in-person and remote students can participate equally.
Save time with automated grading
Poll Everywhere reduces grading time, helping you focus on what matters most—your students. With Poll Everywhere, responses to Multiple-Choice, Ranking, and other Activity types are instantly collected, scored, and organized into reports. This means you can immediately see which students have grasped the material and who may need more support.
Poll Everywhere integrates with Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Canvas and Blackboard, allowing you to export grades directly, so you don’t have to re-enter scores. For class participation, the Q&A and Open-ended Activities make it easy to track who’s contributing, giving students credit for their engagement in real-time.
These automatic grading tools free up time for meaningful tasks—like meeting with students or refining lesson plans—while keeping you updated on student progress without extra effort.
Boost student engagement in your lecture hall with Poll Everywhere
Engage your large class without compromising on interaction or insights. With Poll Everywhere, you can check student understanding, encourage real-time questions, and give every student a voice—even in a full lecture hall. Use Multiple-Choice, Q&A, and Clickable Images to instantly gauge comprehension, or gamify learning with Competitions to inspire friendly rivalry and motivate students.
Poll Everywhere is built for higher education, tailored to meet the needs of professors looking to enhance engagement and student outcomes. Test out different Activity types to see what resonates with your class. You’ll quickly notice how Poll Everywhere not only boosts engagement but also supports long-term retention, making each lecture a more interactive, impactful experience.
