Overview
Mentimeter is a cloud-based polling tool that allows students to contribute to presentations in real time using their phones, tablets or laptops. Staff can use a variety of content types for their slides to gather feedback, check understanding and support active learning.
While highly engaging, some written-response formats (e.g. Open Ended, Word Cloud, etc) can increase the risk of inappropriate submissions.
This guide explains how to set up Mentimeter’s technical controls to manage these risks effectively.
Please note that closed‑question types, such as Multiple Choice, Scales and Ranking, do not pose the same risk of inappropriate submissions, as students select predefined options rather than entering text. The measures in this guide are therefore primarily relevant to open‑text question types.
Before using any of the features described below, please first carefully review our pedagogical guidance on managing written responses in Mentimeter. This guidance outlines the practical steps, communication strategies and technical recommendations needed to use the features below effectively and responsibly.
Use the Profanity filter
The built-in profanity filter automatically blocks many inappropriate terms as Mentimeter lets you set the filter to different languages (e.g. English, French, Finnish), which is particularly useful in sessions with international students.
Please note that the profanity filter may not block all inappropriate responses; therefore, it is recommended to use it alongside the other features listed below.
Enable moderation
Moderation allows you to review and manage responses through Mentimote before they appear to participants.
It is supported by ‘Word Cloud’ and ‘Open-Ended’ question types, enabling you to remove inappropriate responses or restore them if an error was made. For Q&A activities, moderation also allows you to approve questions before they appear to the wider audience, as well as track which questions have been answered and which remain outstanding.
Hide and reveal responses
You can hide real-time responses during the session or, if preferred, set responses to be hidden by default, which you can manually reveal during or after the session. You can still access and review all submissions via the ‘Results’ page of your presentation.
Reset slide results
If inappropriate content has already appeared, you can reset results for individual slides. You do not need to reset results on every slide, only on the one affected. After reset, you can let the audience re-engage with the activity or proceed to the next slide.
Use SSO to identify participants
SSO (Single Sign‑On) requires participants to log in with their UoP accounts. This is useful when accountability or tracking engagement is important, as you need to understand who contributed what, especially in professional-practice contexts.
If you intend to use this feature, ensure this is communicated to participants at the beginning of the session. For tips and more information on setting expectations, please carefully review our pedagogical guidance. We also strongly recommend reviewing the use cases of Mentimeter before enabling this feature.
Setup
To ensure you link participant responses to their identity, you need to use both of the settings described below:
In summary, you need to enable both ‘Participant names are required’ (covered in the first link), and ‘Login required’ (covered in the second link). Using only the ‘Login required’ setting restricts access to the UoP authenticated users, but will not show you who submitted which response (as the second setting refers to gathering participant names).
To understand what each setting does:
- Login required: Only participants with SSO logins (UoP accounts) can access and engage with the presentation.
- Participant names are required: The presenter and other collaborators (with editing permissions) can see participant names in the ‘Results’ page.
- Show names to participants: Both the presenter and participants can see participant names live during the presentation.
Combine these controls
Depending on your aims, you may want to combine these features to balance openness, safety and accountability. Anonymity can work well with lower‑risk, closed‑question types (such as Multiple Choice or Scales), particularly when encouraging honest reflections, exploring sensitive topics or reducing participation anxiety.
However, if your presentation also includes any open‑text activities (e.g. Word Cloud, Open-Ended, Q&A, chat interactions), anonymity should be paired with protective tools like moderation, the profanity filter and hidden results to reduce the risk of inappropriate responses. Remember, you can always reset the results on a single or all slides if needed.
Use SSO to identify participant names when responses need to be attributable. You can still pair SSO with the Mentimeter controls listed above to add extra layers of safety.
