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This paper presents a project where polling and chat were used in the foreign language classroom to promote student participation and, at the same time, provide a record of student contributions. The setting is a Swedish university course in grammar and translation for advanced learners of English. The majority of seminars are devoted to discussing translation assignments that students have prepared at home. During the project, Adobe Connect Pro, a web conferencing solution for online meetings, was used, and all students had access to a computer in the classroom. For each seminar, an online meeting was set up in Adobe Connect with the following tools enabled:

• A poll, used as a clicker at the start of the seminar to gather input from students on a specific language issue.
• A chat, where students typed in their solutions to the translation assignment.
• A whiteboard, where a selection of student solutions were displayed for feedback and discussion.

Student evaluations of the project express that students are positive to using online technology in the classroom. The students participated actively in the poll and chat sessions. In the subsequent oral discussions, participation was remarkably wide. From the teacher’s perspective, the chat provided a written record of student contributions that could be used for further analysis and discussion. Some challenges included managing both written and oral communication in the classroom, and dealing with larger chunks of text in the chat.