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PINGO [on the Web]

Live voting system with formula support designed for higher education

There are a variety of web-based tools on the market for live voting. At the TU Darmstadt, the use of PINGO is common.

This is a free web-based system that was developed by the University of Paderborn and is now managed by coactum GmbH (a spin-off of the university). Compared to other tools, such as Mentimeter , the strength of PINGO is that formulas can be integrated and questions can be imported/exported from/to Moodle.

PINGO stands for “peer instruction for very large groups” and was developed especially for use at universities, the same as Particify . As the name suggests, PINGO is suitable for the use of the didactic method of peer instruction, for example.

Possible use cases for live voting in teaching

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  • Possible question types are: Single, multiple choice, free text and numerical estimation questions.
  • Formula support is possible, but no integration of images in the question text
  • The import and export of questions in common formats, such as Moodle XML or CSV, is supported.
  • The voting questions are managed in a question catalogue (“survey planning”). The use of keywords is recommended.
  • To start a vote, it must be assigned to a “session”. This always happens live. The live poll starts immediately with the assignment. This means that a session cannot be prepared in the sense that all the questions that you want to ask in the course are assigned to it beforehand. Rather, the approach would be to assign a relevant keyword for the desired questions in the preparation. And in the live situation, you can start the appropriate question from the catalogue on the basis of the keyword by assigning it to the session.
  • A session has a fixed numerical access code or QR code, so that a session can be used throughout the semester in a course. The advantage of this is that students do not have to be given a new access code every time they vote.
  • The “quick start” function makes it possible to conduct a vote spontaneously even without a prepared question.
  • Access to the voting is possible either by numerical access code or by QR code.
  • Within a session, a live voting can be run several times and the results of the different runs can be compared with each other.
  • The voting results can be displayed as a diagram, histogram, table or tag cloud (for free text questions).
  • Both the result graphics and the result data can be exported (as an image or CSV).
  • It is possible to share questions and sessions with other users so that they can be shared among colleagues.
  • With the PINGO Remote Control (in German) it is possible to start live voting and show the results without having to go “out” of the presentation and “into” the browser. It is a small application that has to be downloaded to the presentation computer and runs in a window in the foreground.

PINGO (in German) is a web-based free tool developed by the University of Paderborn. Free registration is possible on the PINGO website.

PINGO is operated by coactum GmbH. Information on data protection can be found in this blog post by the University of Paderborn (in German).

To participate in a PINGO vote, students simply go to the URL https://pingo.coactum.de/ and enter the numerical access code of the vote. Or they can go directly to the voting via QR code.

This tool is a suggestion to facilitate the digital daily work in teaching and studying. It is freely available on the web and can be used free of charge (at least in a basic version). Since it is not provided centrally by the TU Darmstadt, we would like to point out that you are responsible for checking your own data protection. Tip: Have a look at our orientation for the assessment of digital tools with regard to data protection .

If you have any doubts, please ask the colleagues in the data protection department (in German)