Frequently asked questions
Ready-made surveys
The Bully Beater
Online elections
Citizenship
Opinion Markets
Questions answered
Screenshots
The Bully Beater
Online elections
Citizenship
Opinion Markets
Questions answered
Screenshots
A product of
BigPulse Opinion Markets
2. I am not very computer literate, will I struggle to get started?
3. What level of support can I expect?
4. Does the service come with standard template polls?
5. How many polls can we open?
6. Can we see some poll examples?
7. How does the online bully beater work?
8. Can we prevent people from voting repeatedly? Can we be sure only authorised people vote?
9. Is it a multi-user licence so several people operate the system?
10. UK schools often ask – how can School Poll help with the OFSTED SEF (Self Evaluation Form)?
11. Do we need to download or install any software?
12. Can parents participate?
13. Can people vote for images? Are the polls suitable for very young students?
14. Can we tailor the poll colours and logo?
15. Can we link our polls to our website?
16. Explain interactive polls
17. How long can the polls stay online?
18. How do students register to vote?
1. What does the School Poll subscription cost?
The annual licence fee includes a fixed base fee plus a user fee for each 200 voting accounts. This means schools purchase voting accounts in blocks of 200 people. You will be pleasantly surprised by our fee scale – especially as our high quality after sales support is included in the rates. The fees are listed here.2. I am not very computer literate, will I struggle to get started?
If you can use your web browser then you can use School Poll. You can open your first poll in just a few minutes. You just click the sign-in link in our getting started email, then click Create New Poll and follow the prompts. School Poll is easy to use and we listen carefully to teachers' suggestions and respond with continuing refinements.3. What level of support can I expect?
High quality support is offered at no additional charge. It means we are confident most clients will have little difficulty in using the software. However we are very keen to hear by phone or email immediately you need any help. We guide you through any hurdles. Our clients tell us they are very impressed with our high quality and prompt support. Currently we have US, UK and Australian support phone numbers. Shortly clients will have access to an online help chat room accessed from their Poll Manager webpage.4. Does the service come with standard template polls?
Yes, we provide a set of pre-configured polls. For example a template for basic surveys, another for interactive Opinion Markets and another for election or award polls. When opening a new poll you start by selecting the template. The configurations of the polls you create in that session are copied from the selected template but you can also change the configuration of any poll at any time.5. How many polls can we open?
Most schools take the self-managed service and for these schools there is no practical limit to the number of polls they can open for the fixed fee.6. Can we see some poll examples?
Various screenshot examples are included in the School Poll website. You can also see a screenshot of the web-based poll administration pages to which you have access as a subscriber.7. How does the online bully beater work?
It's another way to use School Poll. All student names appear in a permanent online poll with a name like Who's the School Bully? The poll is visible only to students and nominated teachers. Any student can vote any time in privacy knowing that only nominated teachers can see who gets voted and who votes. No one is shamed because all names appear in the forum listed alphabetically from the outset.Many students feel uncomfortable approaching school authorities directly. The bully beater poll makes it so easy for anyone who is bullied or who witnesses bullying to inform school authorities. People can vote in private from anywhere perhaps outside school hours from home.
You may find that no one ever gets a vote in the bully beater forum – that's how effective it could be in your school. Its existence discourages those inclined to be bullies from bullying. It's a powerful statement to the entire community that bullying will not be tolerated. Every student will feel safer. Every parent will feel more at ease. More on the bully beater . .
8.Can we prevent people from voting repeatedly? Can we be sure only authorised people vote?
If you use the recommended high security setting each person votes with a personal sign-in name and password called a voting account. It means the vote integrity does not depend on cookies or the IP address of the voter. People can vote from anywhere yet, if they attempt to vote again in the same poll, even from a different location, the repeat vote is blocked. However you can choose to let people vote repeatedly or a set number of times and still this will not corrupt the vote. This is because only the last vote from each person is counted in each poll. It means you can run continuous polls which can be relied upon.9. Is it a multi-user licence so several people operate the system?
Yes, the multi-user license is standard. You can give selected people access to your Poll Manager webpage. This will enable them to act as poll administrators for you. You can also limit the access of selected poll administrators. For example you can prevent selected poll administrators from viewing the vote counts in any polls. This means you can even appoint trusted students as poll administrators.10. UK schools often ask – how can School Poll help with the OFSTED SEF (Self Evaluation Form)?
The OFSTED Self evaluation process involves student surveys. Many school principals have said School Poll is just perfect for SEF and many are using it for the SEF right now. Poll results can be downloaded and included in your SEF.11. Do we need to download or install any software?
No, we host all the software and polling data on our servers so you will not have to install or maintain any software or worry about data backups. You have access to the latest version of the technology automatically – upgrades are released almost daily which means you are always using the very latest version automatically.12. Can parents participate?
Yes. Anyone in the school community can participate in your polls. It's an online service which means people can vote in your polls and surveys from anywhere at a time convenient to them.13. Can people vote for images? Are the polls suitable for very young students?
The youngest students appear to be the most enthusiastic of all. You can upload images and people can vote for the their preferred images. For example children who cannot read might vote for a smiling or frowning face.14. Can we tailor the poll colours and logo?
Yes, we offer a set of pre-configured colour schemes or you can create your own. You can upload your school logo and place banners above the polls. All images can be linked to your website. Once you have tailored a poll you can mark it as a template which means all future polls you create can have the same branding automatically. You might create several different templates like this.15. Can we link our polls to our website?
Yes all polls can be placed in online poll menus and sub-menus and the poll menu can be linked from your website. As polls are added to your menu they automatically appear on your website and are removed from your website simply by deleting them from the poll menu using your School Poll administration webpage.16. Explain interactive polls
Interactive polls are polls which allow the voters (students, parents or teachers) to contribute to the voting agenda either before the vote starts or even while to vote is in progress. Interactive polls include a Submit New button in the poll. For example, it might be labelled Submit New Opinion or Submit New Issue or Submit New Idea or even Submit New Candidate in the case of an election or award poll. While the polls can be set to live publication mode frequently submissions from students appear in a pending area where you can choose to publish them in the poll or send to trash with a single click. The published submissions immediately appear as additional voting options in the poll. We call these interactive polls Opinion Markets – it's a way to let everyone speak at once while producing a concise representative voice of the entire group live and automatically.17. How long can the polls stay online?
Most polls have a set start and end date which is set at the time you open the poll. However you can leave the polls online indefinitely as long as your subscription is current. For example you might open a permanent online suggestion box, or a permanent big issues poll. The bully beater poll is another example of a continuous poll. For these permanent polls you can enable the repeat voting feature which means people can return to the poll any time to update their vote or simply to reaffirm their previous vote. Only the last vote from each person is counted in the vote tally so permanent polls with repeat voting are just as secure as single vote polls.18. How do students register to vote?
If you use the low security polls people will not have to register at all – people can vote as soon as you give them the poll web address or as soon as you link the poll or poll menu to your website. However, if you use the recommended high security polls, each person has a unique sign-in name and password. You can invite students to visit the poll and click a register link which will prompt them to create their own sign-in name and password the first time they vote. Alternately you can pre-generate students' sign-in names and passwords from a list before inviting them to vote. In this case you just copy and paste the list into your Poll Manager webpage. Teachers often use student names as the sign-in names. You can even give all students the same password and you can invite them to change their password as soon as they sign in to vote at any poll. Yet another method is to paste in a list of email addresses and generate a unique sign-in name and password for each email automatically then use the bulk emailer to send each person sign-in details. In fact if you use email addresses you can include automatic poll sign-in links in your emails which means you can use high security polls yet people do not need to remember or even know their personal sign-in name or password.