Collecting anonymous feedback after a class or conference can lead to long delays for limited results.

With simple questionnaire, placed at the end of your presentation, you can collect live, anonymous feedback directly from your audience in minutes instead of days.

Poll Everywhere lets you create anonymous questions online that can be added to PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote. Your audience responds online using their phones or laptops. These responses appear instantly, without requiring participants to register or sign in to an account. Anonymity is available for all Poll Everywhere question types, to make the audience feel safe, while response moderation keeps presenters in control of the show.

Here’s how you can collect anonymous feedback using a free Poll Everywhere account.

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Step 1: Choose the right format for your question

Different formats – such as multiple choice, word cloud, and Q&A – make sense for different questions. Stop and consider what type of feedback you want from your audience. Use that information to decide the best format for your question.

Kansas Youth Pastor Cam Brennan, for example, used an anonymous, open-response format to help his students discuss sex and dating. Students were able to submit questions online using their phones and start a conversation without feeling self-conscious or ashamed.

“Poll Everywhere was a great way to encourage our students to ask the questions they really wanted to ask,” said Brennan. “I’m convinced that had we done it ‘the old fashioned way’ the night would have been a flop.” Anonymous questions can be as simple as the one below, or as open-ended as Brennan’s example.

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Step 2: Enable Anonymity for anonymous feedback

Anonymity lets participants respond without revealing their identity to you or anyone else. You will not be able to correlate anonymous feedback from the same participant when asking multiple questions, or otherwise game the system. Anonymity is absolute.

You enable anonymity by visiting your ‘My Polls’ page and clicking on one of your polls. From there, click ‘Configure’ followed by ‘Audience restriction and identity’ and you will a checkbox marked ‘Completely anonymous’. Check that box to make all responses anonymous for that poll.

Know that once a poll is made anonymous, the change cannot be undone. Our engineers can tell you why, but the short answer is that the user data simply isn’t there. That means participants can respond without the threat of their answers coming back to haunt them.

Discover more ideas for collecting feedback from your class or company

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Bonus: ‘Moderation’ prevents anonymous hijinks

If you’re collecting anonymous feedback during a live presentation, you may be worried about some joker abusing their anonymous status. Don’t worry, just enable moderation. Moderation lets you approve or reject responses before they appear in your presentation.

If you’re presenting from a single screen – or don’t want to juggle moderating and presenting – you can ask a teammate to log in from a second device to handle moderation. This feature is only available with certain premium plans, so refer to Plans & Pricing for more details.