During a lecture your instructor may post polls in their presentations, which you can respond to using the SMS (text messaging) feature of any cell phone. SMS instructions appear for all types of in-class activities except for Image polls.
If you do not see these instructions on the poll, SMS responses may be disabled for your institution. In this case, respond directly in the slide in the Classroom view.
IMPORTANT: You must have entered your mobile phone number in your account profile, and you must be registered for the class. Otherwise you will receive an error message. Data/Text message rates will apply.
Because the target phone number for SMS responses should be the same for all courses across the institution, you may want to create a contact in your phone for this number, to avoid having to re-enter the number repeatedly.
If you need help, text a question mark (?) to the phone number on the question slide.
To respond via SMS
- Create a text message to the phone number listed on the polling slide.
- Type in the polling slide code, add a space, then enter the proper response information. Separate multiple entries with commas.
For example (noting that the sample polling slide code "PZRF" in the below examples will be different for each question):- To submit a single letter as the response, type: PZRF B
- To submit multiple letters as the response, type: PZRF B, C, A
- To submit a text response, type: PZRF Astronomical unit is the average distance between the earth and the sun
- Send the text.
To edit answers submitted via SMS, simply send a new text with the polling slide code of the slide and a new answer. The system logs the latest answer it receives while polling remains open.
You should receive a return message confirming receipt of your response.
You may be subject to a 160 character limit: Not all carriers will break up longer SMS responses properly. This affects Short Answer poll responses in particular. If you submit a response that is longer than the carrier can send as a single answer and the carrier does not break up the response, you may receive a message stating that the second portion of your response is invalid and that the polling slide code is not recognized. Your options are to shorten the response, use the desktop to respond to the poll, or download and use the Echo360 Mobile App.