Poll Penguin

Overview

Poll Penguin is a web-based classroom polling platform developed as part of a university software engineering project. The application enables instructors to create live polls, quizzes, and anonymous feedback sessions while allowing students to respond instantly from their own devices. By collecting responses in real time, instructors can gauge student comprehension and adjust lecture pacing while class is still in progress.

The Problem

Large university computer science courses often enroll more than 150 students, making it difficult for instructors to keep students engaged and accurately measure their understanding throughout a lecture.

During remote learning, instructors relied on Zoom's built-in polling and reaction features to solve these challenges. Pre-class polls encouraged attendance and captured students' attention before lectures began, while "speed up" and "slow down" reactions provided continuous feedback during class. As universities transitioned back to in-person instruction, those feedback tools were no longer readily available.

Our objective was to design and build a web application that recreated these interactive classroom tools in an in-person environment, allowing instructors to collect live feedback and make informed teaching decisions throughout each lecture.

My Role

As a member of a multi-person software engineering team, I contributed to both the frontend and backend of the application. My responsibilities included implementing user interface components, integrating backend functionality, collaborating through Agile development practices, and helping deliver a complete classroom polling platform.

The Solution

Poll Penguin provides instructors with a centralized dashboard for managing classrooms, creating polls and quizzes, collecting anonymous feedback, and viewing live analytics. Students simply join a classroom using a course code and can immediately participate from any web browser without interrupting the flow of the lecture.

The platform allows instructors to quickly identify whether students understand the material, are becoming confused, or are losing engagement, enabling them to adjust the pace of instruction in real time.

Key Features

• Create live polls
• Collect anonymous feedback
• Support student login
• Display live results
• Provide an instructor dashboard
• Create quizzes

Technologies

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• PHP
• MySQL
• Git
• GitHub

Engineering Highlights

Authentication

The authentication system gave students and instructors secure access to the application through account creation, login, and role-specific dashboards. User credentials were validated against a MySQL database through PHP endpoints, enabling personalized access to classroom management and polling features.

As one of my first backend contributions to the project, I implemented the account registration and login workflows, wrote database queries with prepared statements, and created the logic for generating one-time verification codes during account creation. This work established the initial authentication layer and strengthened my understanding of backend development and database integration.

Database Architecture

The application's database was designed to manage user accounts, classrooms, polls, quizzes, and student responses while maintaining relationships between each entity. A relational MySQL database allowed instructors to create courses, manage classroom sessions, and retrieve poll results efficiently.

On the backend, PHP endpoints handled database operations using prepared statements for queries and updates. Careful organization of the database schema made it possible to connect instructors with their classrooms, students with their responses, and polls with the results displayed on the instructor dashboard.

Real-Time Polling

One of the application's primary goals was giving instructors immediate insight into student understanding during lectures. As students submitted responses from their devices, the frontend continuously communicated with the backend through HTTP requests to retrieve updated polling data.

This workflow allowed instructors to monitor classroom participation, view live poll results, and adjust the pace of instruction based on current student feedback. Building this feature required close coordination between the frontend and backend to keep submitted data, processed results, and dashboard views consistent throughout a lecture.

Challenges

One of the biggest challenges was coordinating development in a fully remote team environment during an accelerated summer course. Because team members worked on different features simultaneously, we occasionally encountered integration issues when merging frontend and backend changes. Differences in API expectations, POST request structures, and JSON formats sometimes caused bugs that only became apparent near the end of a sprint.

As deadlines approached, our team collaborated closely to resolve these issues. While some members debugged existing functionality, others finalized new features or polished the user interface. These experiences reinforced the importance of clear communication, consistent API contracts, and regular integration testing throughout development.

Lessons Learned

This project gave me practical experience working on a collaborative software engineering team using Agile development practices. I learned the importance of clear communication, documented API specifications, and frequent integration to avoid difficult merge conflicts late in development.

If I were to build this application again, I would introduce automated API testing, stronger endpoint documentation, and more frequent integration between the frontend and backend to catch compatibility issues earlier in each sprint.

Gallery

Future Improvements

• Add WebSocket-based updates
• Add dark mode
• Add instructor notifications
• Expand analytics dashboards

Project Links