edutxt Polls

This Edutxt PowerLink addon provides the ability for instructors to create polls which students can vote on either by sending an SMS text message or via WebCT. Votes may be restricted to those enrolled in the section. The results of polls are displayed in a pie chart.

This addon requires the Edutxt PowerLink, release 1.1 (or higher).

The Polls addon is installed by adding the following lines to the Edutxt PowerLink properties file:

The above entries define the addon class and attach it to the inbox and student view pages.

Inbox page

A sub-menu option on the Inbox page provides access to the Polling facility. A page is displayed listing all of the currently defined polls and giving access to manage these polls or create a new one.

The poll configuration page allows you to enter values for the following settings:

• Enabled - an option to quickly enable or disable a poll; only enabled polls are available for use
• Question - the question or statement which is the subject of the poll
• Options - the text corresponding to each of the possible options; up to 10 options are allowed per poll
• Maximum options per vote - it is possible to allow users to vote for more than one option in a poll
• Resubmission - users may be permitted to change their vote; if this is disabled then students will be shown the results of \the poll immediately they have voted
• Restrict - when enabled, this option will only accept votes from mobile numbers registered in the profile of a user enrolled in the section (or those made on-line)
• Clear - ticking this option will cause any existing votes for the poll to be deleted and reset to zero
• Voting opens - the date and time after which votes are accepted for the poll; before this time students the poll will not be visible to students (this may be left blank to automatically open polling)
• Voting closes - the date and time at which votes are no longer accepted for the poll (leave blank to allow voting at any time)
• Publish until - the date and time until which the results of the poll will be available to students (leave blank to keep results available permanently); results are always available to section instructors
• Chart format - choose from a pie chart or a 3D pie chart
• Chart width and height - set the size of the chart to be displayed
• Include question? - when ticked the question will be included in the chart; when not ticked the question will be displayed above the chart
• Include count? - when ticked the number of votes for each option is included in the chart labels
• Include percentages? - when ticked the percentage of the votes for each option is included in the chart labels

See below for an example of how the poll results are displayed.

 View movie illustration (4:00 minutes)

Student view page

If there are any active polls, a sub-menu option allows students to select a poll and either view instructions on how to vote

or see the results of the poll:

This work is written by Stephen Vickers and is released under a Creative Commons GNU General Public Licence. The Edutxt Polls Addon will be downloadable from OSCELOT where it is also possible to report bugs and submit feature requests.