Survey/Poll
Surveys
The most full-featured tool available for doing surveys is KeySurvey. KeySurvey is a web application that allows you to create any number of survey questions of various types including yes/no, multiple choice, scaled answers and so on.
Simple surveys can be done with a Google Apps spreadsheet using forms. Google forms are simply another way to get information into a Google spreadsheet. When you create a form, each question becomes a column in the spreadsheet. When people fill out the form, each person's answers are added as a row in the spreadsheet. For more information, see:
Google Docs › Help articles › Google Spreadsheets › Working with Data › Forms › Creating forms
Classroom Polling
In a small class its easy to find out what students think about a particular question/topic. Simply ask them to raise their hands. But if your class is large or students are reluctant to share their views, opinions or knowledge about a given query, "clickers" can help.
Clickers are "personal response systems" that work much like TV remote controls, allowing each student to respond by "clicking" a button that transmits (usually via infrared or radio frequency technology) their response to a receiving station.
With clickers, the responses of students can be quickly and accurately aggregated, allowing faculty to evaluate what students think or know and allowing students to gauge what they know or how their opinions compare with others. For more information, see:
Case Studies
Clickers in a large lecture class (Catherine Combelles)