Live Polling & Peer Instruction

How Live Polling Works

During a live session, you can launch any question from your slide deck as a poll. Students see the question on their devices and submit their answers in real time. A live response counter on your presenter screen shows how many students have answered, so you know when to close the poll and show results.

Polls work with any question type — multiple choice, true/false, open-ended, rating, and more — but the peer instruction workflow is most commonly used with conceptual multiple-choice questions.

The 30/70 Decision Rule

Peer instruction, developed by Eric Mazur at Harvard, uses student responses to a conceptual question to decide what happens next. The rule of thumb is based on the percentage of students who answered correctly on the first vote:

• Below 30% correct — The concept needs more direct instruction. Re-teach the material with a different explanation or example, then re-poll with a similar question. Peer discussion will not help much if almost nobody understands the concept yet.
• Between 30% and 70% correct — This is the sweet spot for peer instruction. Enough students understand the concept to explain it to their neighbors, but enough are still confused that discussion is productive. Move to the discussion phase.
• Above 70% correct — Most students already get it. Briefly explain the correct answer, address any notable wrong-answer patterns, and move on. Spending time on peer discussion here has diminishing returns.

The Discussion and Revote Cycle

When you are in the 30-70% zone, instruct students to turn to a neighbor and argue for their answer. Give them two to three minutes. Students who got it right practice explaining; students who got it wrong hear a peer's reasoning, which often resonates differently than an instructor's explanation.

After discussion, run a revote on the same question. Quizzibility tracks both rounds so you can see the shift in responses. Typically, the correct answer percentage jumps significantly after peer discussion. Display both histograms side by side — this visual evidence of learning is powerful for students and reinforces that the discussion phase is worth their time.

When to Use Live Polling

Live polling is most effective for conceptual questions where common misconceptions exist. It works less well for factual recall (students either know it or they don't — discussion won't help) or for questions so easy that everyone gets them right. The best polling questions have plausible distractors that map to known misconceptions.

Build polling questions into your slide decks in advance, but don't be afraid to skip or add polls based on how the class is going. The goal is responsive teaching, not rigid adherence to a script.