Feature Focus: Social Polls

A social poll is a question followed by a graph that shows how all users answered that question. It's a unique way to enhance the learning experience. It adds weight to questions, encourages deeper reflection, and has the power to create a sense of community between learners. Just because you're not in a classroom doesn't mean you have to scrimp on the social side of learning!

In this article we'll explore how you can use social polls and graphs to boost your elearning, and point you in the direction of practical resources.

Contents:

1. Examples

• Add weight to a mythbuster question and show learners they're not alone
• Reflect on questions that don't have a right or wrong answer
• Compare how views have changed

2. More on social polls

Examples

Here we demonstrate some common use cases for adding social polls to your module.

1. Add weight to a mythbuster question and show learners they're not alone

Social polls are a great way to build engagement at the start of a course. A mythbuster and social polling graph combo is a 'hook' you can add upfront in a module to draw learners in and make them curious about the content. This performance improvement module demonstrates this approach by opening with a thought-provoking mythbuster-style question.

After making their decision learners see a graph that demonstrates how their choice compared to their peers, along with an explanation of the correct answer.

Adding this kind of social interaction to a question creates real impact and a sense of shared experience between learners. It also exposes common misconceptions - and shows the learner that many others may have misconceptions about the subject as well.

This example also combines social polling with Clips to play back the learner's chosen answer and reinforce how many peers thought the same as them. Find out more about how to make the most of Clips in Using text input clips.

2. Reflect on questions that don't have a right or wrong answer

Social polls don't just add impact to factual questions. The social nature of the feature lends itself well to questions that explore grey areas, for example in soft skills modules.

This ethics training module uses polling questions with live data to simulate a debate about economics. The learner listens to opposing viewpoints before being asked to decide which view they agree with.

A graph and Clip follow this, playing back the learner's opinion and showing how many others agreed with their view.

This is an attention-grabbing, visual way of exposing the wide variety of views on a subject - and creates greater impact than simply stating there are multiple opinions out there.

3. Compare how views have changed

Another great use of social polling is to expose how views change before and after working through an elearning module.

In this scenario-based module learners are shown a short scenario and asked to judge whether a person is guilty or not.

The learner then dives deeper into the scenario, exploring the cases for and against each piece of evidence involved.

Now the learner has got more information about the scenario, they're asked whether or not they've changed their mind since they first judged the character.

Now the learner discovers what really happened in the case. This is followed by a social poll comparison that highlights how the learner's initial and final verdicts compared to the rest of the general public's, and how that has changed since viewing more evidence. Clips are also used to emphasise this change.

Comparisons like this create powerful moments of reflection, exposing how viewpoints can change and differ based on multiple factors. It's a great way to highlight the importance of a subject as it demonstrates how the learning content has changed opinions on a large scale.

More on social polls

These resources will help you to set up your results pages:

• Check out this Learning Hub video to see a demonstration of how to set up a social poll and to discover more examples of how you can use them effectively.
• This support article explains how to set up a social poll.
• This masterclass provides more detail on the psychology behind why polls work, as well as case studies and expert tips.

This kind of flow is great for creating a really interactive and engaging experience. To make sure your course is set up correctly set the social polling question at the start of your course to have a score weighting of 0. This ensures that the engagement question doesn't contribute a score in addition to the scored questions in the final test, which could otherwise lead to a skewed final result.