Habits can make or break a student’s education. Some cultivate habits that keep them on a steady track towards success, while others fight against their habits as they try to learn. In this month’s blog post, discover how you can use iClicker with your students in a way that helps them improve their habits both in and out of the classroom. Use iClicker’s Attendance feature to encourage the habit of regular attendance. Choosing to attend class isn’t easy sometimes. A college class can be a lot like the gym; a place we pay to attend but don’t. Encourage your students to make class attendance a regular habit with iClicker’s Attendance tool, which is designed to  Turn on iClicker’s Focus Mode to encourage the habit of full engagement. Your students are very aware that their phone can be distractions. Help them learn to manage that distraction by turning iClicker’s Focus Mode on in your class settings. With Focus Mode, students are encouraged to  Encourage better study habits with iClicker Study Tools. With iClicker Study Tools, students are able to take your iClicker polling questions and make them into flashcard packs and practice tests. Be sure to carefully grade your questions and replace slides as needed to help your students get the most out of your iClicker questions. For more ideas about how your can use iClicker to encourage healthy classroom habits, watch the webinar below: ... View more

When a challenge hits the classroom, students with a growth mindset can thrive while other students may flail. Research shows that students with a fixed mindset believe intelligence and ability are static qualities one is born with, while students with a growth mindset believe they are dynamic qualities anyone can improve with time and effort. Using iClicker for active learning is perfect for classroom activities that encourage a growth mindset, helping students learn resilience and flexibility along with the subject matter. This month we’re offering three ways you can use iClicker to encourage a growth mindset in your classroom. Teach your students about growth mindsets with polling questions. Students benefit from learning to identify a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. Ask students if they agree or disagree with statements like “Learning comes easily to those who are gifted” or “speed and perfection are the enemy of of difficult learning”. Use their responses as a way to discuss the time and effort they need to invest in your course in order to be successful. Create tight, honest feedback loops with truly challenging polling questions. Have you ever played a game that’s too easy? Your students want iClicker questions that have the potential to stump them. Ask questions that students routinely miss on your quizzes and exams. You can also try asking one “impossible” question each class session. It will normalise failure as part of the learning process and give your students the opportunity to surprise you! Use iClicker Assignments to encourage students to reflect on quizzes and exams. Part of having a growth mindset is being able to for student honestly assess their own investment of time and effort in their success. Use an iClicker Assignment to ask 2-3 question where students reflect on the steps they took to prepare. These can be offered as small extra-credit opportunities after an assessment, giving students even more incentive to look honestly at their own efforts. For more ways iClicker can be used to encourage growth mindsets, watch below. ... View more

As a best practice, we recommend performing a quick audit of your active courses in iClicker Cloud before the start of each new term to see if you’ll need to archive any courses from the previous term. Archiving a previous course will remove it from the course search results in the iClicker student app, and it will prevent you from accidentally starting a new class session in your old course.   Take a moment to look at the End Dates of the courses in your active list. If there’s anything you want to archive immediately, you can do so by selecting the course, then clicking the Archive button. Learn more about archiving courses.     If you have any end dates you wish to modify (perhaps a course that is ending well before the default end date that was auto-selected), select the course, then navigate to its Settings. On the main Course Details tab, you’ll be able to set a different End Date for the course. Learn more about modifying your course settings.     TIP: If you have a practice course you’d like to keep using for another term, you can extend the end date. You can also set the course to be unlisted, so no students would be able to accidentally select the course and join it from the app.   ... View more

World Oceans Day is an international observation taking place annually June 8th, a day celebrating oceans and ocean life. This year’s theme is Revitalization and we have a trivia deck that you can use to revitalize your students with some ocean trivia. Download the Trivia Deck   ... View more

May is National Mental Health Awareness Month and we’ve created a deck of iClicker activities instructors can use with their students to discuss healthy coping mechanisms, campus resources and more! Download the Activity Deck ... View more

Colleges and universities know that spring traditions are more than just spring break. Explore springtime traditions from a variety of institutions in this month’s trivia deck. ... View more

iClicker gives you the freedom to ask questions whenever and wherever you need. You’re not limited to preset questions-and-answers, and if your lesson demands it, you can ask an iClicker question with no advanced notice. In this month’s blog post, we show you how to ask questions “on the fly” and give you ideas for how to use this feature in class. Take the “Temperature” of Your Classroom Not entirely sure what your class is thinking? Perhaps you explained a concept quickly or you are lingering over details. Use an on-the-fly iClicker question to see where students are and what they may need. You can set iClicker to multiple choice and ask them to hit A if they want more detail, or B if they are ready to move on. This quick step also re-engages every student quickly, encouraging self-reflection. Use iClicker to Make Classroom Decisions The best laid plans of mice and college professors often go awry. Deadlines need to shift or a new groups need to be formed. Use iClicker when these situations present themselves in class. You can open a word processing document, write out the choices, then use a target question to let students record their choices. Using iClicker ensures every student has a say in their classroom community and not just the more dominant voices. You also get an easy record of what students decided. End Class with a Minute Paper Sometimes the last minute of class zooms up without warning. Use iClicker on-the-fly to collect the last precious thoughts you students want to share. Simply set your iClicker poll to short answer and verbally ask students to spend the last minute of class time sharing their ideas in the iClicker student app. You can use the ideas from those Minute Papers when you meet as a class again, jump-starting discussion in an organic way. Replace Images After Class When asking questions on-the-fly, you might not have a screenshot ready to share with students. You can ask a question orally, then replace the image of your question after class by going to iClicker.com and logging in as an instructor. Once there, just click on the name of your course, then the polling session you wish to edit.  ... View more

With add/drop period behind us, it’s time for spring cleaning for your iClicker roster and gradebook. It’s helpful to know how to remove a student (or yourself, if you joined your own course as a student) from your roster or delete an activity from your gradebook.   Check out our best practices below for keeping your iClicker Cloud or iClicker Classic roster and gradebook clean and tidy.     iClicker Cloud - Roster How to Manage Your Roster in iClicker Cloud Manage Roster & Grade Sync: Blackboard Brightspace by D2L Canvas How to Block or Remove a Student from Your Course (Tip: Remember to remove yourself if you had joined as a student. You may need to remove co-instructors and TAs, too, if you are using Brightspace by D2L.) Re-Enroll Students Receiving "Course Access Is Blocked" Message How to Resolve Multiple iClicker Accounts for the Same Student   iClicker Cloud - Grades How to Use the Gradebook on the iClicker Cloud Instructor Website Manage Roster & Grade Sync: Blackboard Brightspace by D2L Canvas How to View and Edit Student Scores How to View and Manage Attendance Data How to Export Grades for All Activities from iClicker Cloud Overview: How to Add Grades from iClicker Cloud to Your LMS     iClicker Classic - Roster How to Sync Your iClicker Classic Roster with Student App Accounts How to Delete a Student from Your iClicker Classic Roster (Tip: Remember to remove yourself if you had joined as a student. You may need to remove co-instructors and TAs, too, if you are using Brightspace by D2L.) How to Manage Students with Multiple Registered Devices in iClicker Classic   iClicker Classic - Grades How to Use the iClicker Classic Gradebook How to Sync Grades with Your LMS How to Manually Upload Grades to Your LMS How to Export Grades from iClicker Classic ... View more

With iClicker Study Tools, students are able to take your iClicker polling questions and make them into flashcard packs and practice tests. Let your students know this feature is included with iClicker and read on for more ways you can create iClicker questions worth studying. Make sure your iClicker questions connect clearly to formal assessments.  Students enthusiastically review their iClicker questions when they know they are inspired by the ones they will encounter on their quizzes and exams. Your past formal assessments are also great places to find potential polling questions. What questions did students miss the most on your midterm last semester? Be sure to ask iClicker questions that are at the same difficulty level and the same question type they’ll meet on your quizzes and exams. Keep some slide design principles in mind. There’s a lot of overlap between a well-designed presentation slide and a well-designed flash card. Use a large, clear font and make sure it contrasts well with your background. You’ll also want to think about what your slides will look like on students’ phones, since that’s where they’ll review your questions. You should also try to include simple graphics when appropriate to trigger the picture superiority effect. Ask a variety of question types. The type of question you ask your students impacts how they’ll interact with them through Study Tools. If you ask a multiple choice question, flashcards will show a simple A-E response on the back of the card. If you ask students short answer, numeric and target questions, your students will see much more detail on the back of their flashcards. Introducing a variety of question types also takes advantage of interleaving, a method where instructors mix topics and question types to improve learning outcomes. ... View more

      iClicker’s new Confidence Rating feature encourages students to reflect on their learning in class and provides instructors additional real-time insight into student understanding. Here’s how it works and some best practices for using it!   Instructors Turn on the Confidence setting from the More button of your toolbar anytime during an active class session, before running a poll in which you wish to gauge student confidence. Keep in mind the following tips:  You can’t turn Confidence on after starting a Polling question (you also can’t turn it on outside of an active class session) Once you turn Confidence on, it stays on for the rest of the class session, until you return to the More menu and turn it off. If you’re familiar with Anonymous mode, Confidence Rating functions in the same way To avoid student burnout with Confidence Rating, we recommend asking Confidence Ratings strategically rather than including with every single polling question  After you stop the Polling question, students receive a five-second grace period  to finish submitting their Confidence Rating. During this time, students can’t answer or change their response to the poll question itself, and you can’t grade students’ responses using the Results chart Students’ individual confidence ratings are anonymized, but you can view aggregate confidence ratings using the Results chart in class You can also view aggregate confidence ratings using the Class History section of the iClicker Cloud instructor website after class. If you ask multiple questions with Confidence Rating enabled, you’ll see which question in the class session had the highest Confidence Rating and which had the lowest   Students Students can rate their confidence in their Polling responses: Very confident, Confident, Somewhat confident, Not confident.  Students won’t see Confidence Rating until after they have responded to the Polling question After you stop the Polling question, students have a five-second grace period to finish submitting their Confidence Rating   Software updates to support Confidence Rating  Instructors Cloud 5.2.1 was released to support Confidence Rating. This is an optional update, but you must update your desktop software if you plan to use Confidence Rating. To update, follow the in-app prompt to update your desktop software, use the iClicker Cloud menu option to 'Check for Updates', or visit the iClicker Downloads page.   Students Version 6.3 of the iOS and Android apps was released to support Confidence Rating. The iClicker student web app was updated automatically. This is an optional update, but students must update their mobile apps or participate with the web app to use Confidence Rating. ... View more

  We’ve long recommended that instructors run a few practice activities in a separate sandbox course before going live with iClicker in a real class, with real students. Students often get concerned when they see they’ve “missed” a few activities, and they don’t know you were just practicing before the term started.   Now that we’ve released our unlisted course feature, instructors can create a practice course that is truly hidden from students. When you limit course enrollment to only invited students, students will not be able to find it among the searchable courses associated with your institution in the student app. They can join an unlisted course by invitation only, whether it’s via roster sync, Quick Join, or an LTI link.   To set a course as unlisted, select the option that Students must be invited to this course under your Enrollment settings. You can do this as you’re creating a new course in iClicker Cloud or anytime after, through the Course Details page of your course settings. Learn more about creating a course and managing your settings. Then, you’re ready to start practicing on your own or with a colleague or two! Remember that you can use your instructor credentials to sign in to the iClicker student mobile or web app for free. Contact tech support if you need a student subscription extension. Learn more about running practice iClicker sessions. Interested in setting your real, live course as unlisted? Simply follow the steps to create a new unlisted course or modify an existing course, then add students to your course. ... View more

  As you run polls in class with iClicker Cloud, you’re able to select which screen or window you want to image capture and send to students as a Polling question. In our latest round of releases for Spring 2022, we added a feature to allow instructors to replace the original Polling image any time after class through the instructor website. The image replacement tool can be especially useful in the following scenarios: You are teaching remotely and your polling image includes your students’ faces or other toolbars associated with your videoconferencing interface You asked an “on-the-fly” question in class that was not written out in advance, and you wish to provide that question to students after class You wish to upload annotated versions of your slides  You accidentally image captured the wrong screen or window for your polling question in class Remember that students are able to turn any past Polling questions into study guides. As students bookmark Polling questions in their iClicker student accounts, the app automatically adds those questions to the Study Tools section, where they can review them as flashcards or practice test questions. All you have to do as the instructor is use the default setting to share Polling question images with students (you can also manage this sharing after class) and grade the questions in class or after class, so that students have the correct answers to study from. To get started with Polling image replacement, navigate to your course on the iClicker Cloud instructor website. Select the Polling activity from your Class History. Select the three-dots icon next to the question you wish to update and select Replace Image. You can upload an image in .jpg, .jpeg, or .png format. Learn more about using the Replace Image menu option or replacing the image through the grading panel.  ... View more

With iClicker Anonymous mode, you can ask any iClicker Polling question without connecting responses to individual student records. When you ask Anonymous questions, you put the focus on honest reflection instead of right or wrong answers. So what’s the best way to use this unique mode? Use Anonymous mode to give students privacy. You may be connecting your lesson plans to current events and long to know your students’ thoughts unfiltered. You also may want to give them a place where they can talk about their experiences with the pandemic, especially when it touches your subject. With Anonymous mode, students can fearlessly discuss the complicated world we live in without connecting their experiences to their academic achievement. Collect student questions fearlessly. There’s really no such thing as a stupid question when it can be asked anonymously. Using iClicker to collect student questions also gives you a record of what your students are really wondering, so it can help you refine your future lesson plans. Giving students a private way to ask questions is especially important in classes that may be changing from in-person to online classes! Preview responses before displaying them to the class. Anonymous responses are truly anonymous, so be sure to preview the responses to your short-answer questions before letting your students see the results. The easiest way to preview your results is to use the iClicker Cloud Instructor App on your mobile device. iClicker's Anonymous mode allows students to respond to your iClicker polling questions with complete honestly. We've put together a deck of sample questions to inspire you below! ... View more

  We’re ringing in the New Year with a few new features for iClicker Cloud instructors. Learn more and see the new releases in action at our Back to Campus webinar later this month! Confidence Rating: This tool encourages students to reflect on their learning in class and provides instructors additional real-time insight into student understanding. As they respond to polls in class using the iClicker student mobile and web apps, students will have the option to rate their level of confidence in each response. Instructors can display aggregate confidence ratings in class on the Results chart and view them after class through the Class History section of the instructor website. Software Updates to Support Confidence Rating: Instructors: Cloud 5.2.1 will be released to support Confidence Rating for 2022 classes. This will be an optional update, but you must update your desktop software if you plan to use Confidence Rating. To update, follow the in-app prompt to update your desktop software, use the iClicker Cloud menu option to 'Check for Updates', or visit the iClicker Downloads page. Students: Version 6.3 of the iOS and Android apps will be released to support Confidence Rating for 2022 classes. The iClicker student web app will be updated automatically. This will be an optional update, but students must update their mobile apps or participate with the web app to use Confidence Rating. Unlisted Courses: Unlisted courses will be invitation-only and will not appear in search results if students attempt to manually look up the course in their apps. Students must enroll via either the course’s unique Quick Join code/link or LMS integration (e.g., Roster & Grade Sync). Instructors can manage student enrollment options upon creating a new course or modifying an existing course’s settings. Streamlined Desktop Software Launch: To provide clearer messaging around when to use the instructor website vs. desktop software and a more consistent experience for users with and without computer admin rights, the “Start Class” button on the instructor website will no longer launch the desktop software. Instructors will instead see a reminder that they need to switch to the desktop software to run in-class activities. Improved Integration Settings: The Integrations tab of the course settings will provide information about the relevant grade sync type based on what the campus admin has enabled for the instructor’s school. ... View more

Before starting a new term with iClicker Cloud, we recommend taking a few moments to archive last term’s course(s) and set up your new term’s course(s): Make sure last term’s courses are archived. Your courses will automatically archive on the End Date you set during course creation. You can also archive a course at any time in the desktop software or on the instructor website. You are still able to access your course information, but the archived course will no longer appear in the iClicker student app search results and no new students will be able to join the old course in the new term. If you haven’t done so already, update your desktop software. Create a new course in the desktop software or on the instructor website for each course you’re teaching in the new term. While not required, the optional course information can help your students identify your course in their apps. For example, there could be multiple sections of the same course at your institution. This additional information provides more details for your students to recognize and join the correct class. Copy any Assignments you had previously created and wish to reuse in your new course(s). Customize your course settings. Choose how you would like to add grades from iClicker Cloud to your Learning Management System. If Roster & Grade Sync is enabled for your course, you’ll see the prompt to walk you through setup in the Integrations tab of your course settings. If you set up LTI Grade Sync in your LMS last semester, you cannot simply copy the link or assignment from the previous course for the new term. LTI links are course-specific, so you’ll need to set up a new link for each new course. Invite co-instructors or teaching assistants to your new course(s). Share registration instructions with your students. Our customizable syllabus templates and first day of class slides provide a good starting point. Check out the student onboarding resources below that most closely match your own class setup: I am using iClicker Cloud for a virtual class. I am integrating iClicker Cloud with Achieve. I am using iClicker Cloud's Roster & Grade Sync (requires prior setup by a campus administrator). My campus requires that students sign in to iClicker through a campus portal. I am using iClicker Cloud's LTI Grade Sync (requires prior setup by a campus administrator). I am downloading grades from iClicker Cloud and manually importing them to my LMS. I will not be adding any grades from iClicker Cloud to my LMS. I am using iClicker Cloud for Attendance only (no polling or quizzing). ... View more