In this article we cover:
- What is a word cloud?
- Reasons to use word clouds
- When using a word cloud remember
- Tips for selecting word cloud topics
- How do participants input their word cloud responses?
- Two ways to display word clouds
- Filtering words from your word cloud
- Who contributed what word
What is a word cloud?
A word cloud is a visual representation (image) of word data. In other words, it is a collection, or cluster, of words depicted in different sizes. The bigger and bolder the word appears, the more often it’s mentioned within a given text and the more important it is.
Check this video for some word cloud ideas.
Reasons to use word cloud polls
Word cloud visualization is very popular among presenters & teachers alike. The fun and interactive way of displaying it makes it a popular choice as an ice breaker or start to a meeting. It also gives a quick insight into what the most popular or pressing issues are.
Word cloud is used to:
- Get insight into the most popular concepts or to reveal sentiment.
- It provides instant analysis & visualization of word data and feedback.
- It engages & sparks excitement among participants.
- It can be used as a quick summary slide or take away after a lesson or meeting, aiding in meeting & class retention.
- Start friendly debates.
- Get some demographic from your participants by asking questions such as where they are from, what company do they represent, where do they currently study, etc.
When using word cloud remember:
- Participants can send in multiple responses.
- Participants can send in individual words or short phrases (max 20 letters).
- The size of each word reflects its frequency in the word cloud image.
- If you have a large audience, not all participant responses might display in the word cloud - only the most repeated ones. But all the words submitted will still be in the data report.
- If the profanity filter is selected in your session settings, it will automatically be applied to your word cloud polls.
Tips for selecting word cloud topics:
- Keep questions simple.
- Make sure the question is relevant to every participant. For example, ask a general question like ‘Where would you like to go on your next holiday?’.
- Use it as crowdsourcing for ideas & suggestions i.e ask ‘What should we name our new Bot?’
- Give participants enough time to answer the poll. Participants need to be more creative and have time to text when submitting responses.
- Best results will be when word frequency comes into play.
- Test your word cloud question on someone else before you use it in a live environment.
- You can manually filter words from the word cloud in your dashboard. Read the article on how to remove a word in word cloud.
How do participants input their word cloud responses?
The polling question will appear at the top of the participant device screen.
Participants are automatically reminded that they can send multiple responses.
When using the space bar or ‘Send’ button the word/short phrase response will automatically be sent.
There are 2 ways to display word clouds
The default setting is to show results on poll close. In other words while the word cloud is open, the results will only show when the poll is closed.
1. Show the word cloud results only when the poll is closed
Run your word cloud question from the control bar in present view.
Open your poll, remember to keep it open for a reasonable time, then close it and the word cloud will automatically appear on the present view screen as a static image.
2. Impress your participants with dynamic image building
Show dynamic image building on-screen as participants are busy submitting their word cloud responses. The word cloud grows and becomes bigger as more participants submit their responses, live for everyone to see. You can either set your polls to show results in real-time, or keep the default setting (for the rest of your polls) to show results on poll close but do the following to see the dynamic update for the word cloud only:
Go to present view.
Open the word cloud poll with the control bar at the bottom.
Press the ‘Show results’ button while the participants are busy submitting their responses.
The word cloud poll will update every few seconds as more participant responses are received.
When you close the poll, the last image will stay on screen until you move on to the next question.
Filtering words from your word cloud
If you want to ensure that you are happy to reveal all the words that are submitted in a word cloud, you can always filter or remove the unwanted words. to remove some words before they appear on screen for all to see, do the following:
Use the dashboard to open your poll. Give your participants adequate time to answer and send in their responses.
If you want to filter some of the responses simply click on the response. It will become greyed out and will be omitted from the word cloud.
From the dashboard, you can close the poll and then decide to either show the results in present view to the participants (select publish results) OR
Hide the results to download at a later stage. If you choose not to show the results, then select the ‘Next’ option. The participant screens will automatically revert back to the Q&A board.
Want to see who contributed what words in a word cloud?
We always recommend using Vevox in an anonymous way to ensure honest feedback. But if you want to know who contributed what words, be sure to set your session settings to 'Identified'. You will have to wait to view the data report at the end of the session to see the names next to the comments.
From the data report it is also possible to see the number of times a word was repeated in the word cloud.