Having been on the periphery for a few weeks it now seems that Twitter Polls have been broadly released for use by anyone with an account. Tweets can now take the form of a question and be accompanied by a simple, binary either/or response, which will stay live for 24 hours and update each time a user responds. They can be deployed quickly and easily and are an excellent means of gathering a quick response from a class regarding a topic that might have come about in the course of a discussion and had not been factored in prior to the start of a class or session. This seems to be a technical solution prompted by users adopting the RT for “x” Favourite for “y” ad hoc polling system that is common on the network.
Creating a Poll
Setting up a poll can be done is just a few moments, simply click on the text box as you would when composing a standard tweet
Below you will notice there is a new Button “Poll” clicking this will expand the interface slightly to accommodate 2 responses. Your tweet can be up to the usual 140 Characters and include links and images as usual. The responses are limited to 20 characters so the scope for developed answers is limited in favour of gathering opinions (agree/disagree for example) that can further in class discussion. Once happy with the question and answer, simply hit “Tweet” and the content will post to your timeline in the usual manner, only with the ability for users to respond.
One potential use case slightly more developed than straw polling on a topic on the fly would be linking to an article or video and then asking people to respond to a poll about the content. This allows significant expansion on the 140 character limit and can introduce multimedia components into the process.
Polls can be used to engage those within the classroom or expanded to engage a broader audience with the conversation. If you’d prefer a wider participation, you may want to consider pinning the tweet. Pinning, in short affords the tweet prominence on your feed. Remaining at the top instead of being nudged down by more recent content. Bear in mind that as the polls only have a 24 hour shelf life pinning is best used as a short term measure in order to avoid having out of date polls at the top of your Twitter feed.
Any thoughts or suggestions on this, or if there’s anything you’d like to see added, please respond to the @LJMUTLA feed and we’ll keep the conversation going there.