Enhanced Grade Sync | Release 4.6   Support for Blackboard and Canvas available this Fall with more coming soon.     Download Now   iClicker's easy-to-use multi-column grade sync experience provides instructors much more flexibility in setting up and syncing grades to their LMS. With this update, instructors will be able to sync grades for individual sessions or as a combined total, as well as sync session points rather than percentage.     Changes to the Instructor Website | Release 5.0 Version 5.0 will launch exciting changes to the iClicker Cloud instructor website that are currently available in preview mode, including the ability to view or edit session details and grades from the new Session History section. Some of the significant updates include: A simplified Gradebook will summarize grade totals only. Individual session details can still be accessed under Session History. New Class Sessions will allow you to switch between polls and quizzes in a single session without prompting students to re-join your session. Class sessions will also be integrated with taking Attendance so you will no longer need to launch separate Attendance sessions. Simply start your class and Attendance will automatically run.   All Activities... in One Session | Release 5.0 Polling, quizzing and attendance will soon be launched from a single iClicker Cloud session, making it easier for instructors to conduct in-class activities and for students to participate in polls, quizzes and attendance. Simple, Elegant Instructor Interface | Release 5.0 We are excited to be developing a more modern and streamlined experience for instructors in both the desktop software and the instructor website. Set to go live in January 2019, the new user interface will launch a fresh design and improvements to window management so instructors can focus less on our software and more on in-class activities.   Video Link : 2496   ... View more

Expanded Student Study Capabilities   NEW! Digital flashcards Students can easily create and curate flashcards around concepts they most need to practice and review to create a more focused, customized study experience, right from their mobile devices.       Download Now     Modernized and streamlined instructor options   NEW! Run and manage polling session and class presentation from mobile devices Instructors no longer have to be tethered to a desktop. Polling session and your presentation can be managed including monitoring and sharing results, tracking which students have responded and reviewing questions in the active polling session, all from a mobile device. PLEASE NOTE: The iClicker Cloud Mobile instructor app requires iClicker Cloud 4.2.2 or newer       PREVIEW! New elegant, modern instructor web experience Instructors can preview the modern, streamlined navigation and design of the iClicker web experience going live for Fall 2018. Instructors can get a jumpstart on familiarizing themselves with the new, easy-to-use experience prior to the mandatory update for Fall courses.     Enhanced instructor communication with iClicker product team   NEW! Give Feedback button When using the new modern, streamlined preview experience, instructors can provide direct feedback to the iClicker product team via the “Give Feedback” button in the left navigation bar making it even easier for instructors and technologists to provide insight and feedback on the iClicker experience.   Improved accessibility for students and instructors We continue to make steady progress to ensure that iClicker and its supporting applications are aligned to WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards as closely as possible. The March 2018 release includes numerous screen-reader and keyboard accessibility improvements to the instructor and student websites.   ... View more

Algorithms can help faculty discover and select open educational resources for a course, map the concepts covered in a particular text, generate assessment questions and more. By David Raths 10/04/17 The basic definition of machine learning is that it allows a computer to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. One obvious example: the way a Netflix algorithm learns our TV-watching habits to make suggestions of other movies we might like. We come into contact with dozens of such machine-learning algorithms every day. Algorithms are even starting to make an impact on university campuses, taking on time-consuming tasks to ease faculty and administrator workloads. For example, RiteClass's predictive admissions platform uses machine learning to produce a "Prospective Student Fit Score" by ingesting data about current students and alumni. The Fit Score will determine how similar (or different) a prospective student is to current students and alumni, according to the company, helping institutions make data-driven admissions decisions. And in support of faculty members, several efforts are underway to use machine learning to analyze the contents of open educational resources (OER) for their fit in a particular course. Algorithm-Assisted Content California State University, Fresno has been urging its faculty members to seek out appropriate no- or low-cost course materials. The problem: Replacing costlier course material with appropriate OER content is time-consuming, said Bryan Berrett, director of the campus's Center for Faculty Excellence. To ease the process of selecting material, CSU-Fresno has been piloting an analytics solution from Intellus Learning, which has indexed more than 45 million online learning resources and can make recommendations of matching OER content. "If I am teaching an English course and I have a standard textbook, I can type the ISBN number into Intellus," explained Berrett. "Broken down by chapter, it will say here are all the OER resources that are available that match up with that content." The faculty member can then upload the resources directly into the course learning management system. Intellus says it can also index the millions of learning objects in use at an institution and provide real-time analytics on student usage. A similar homegrown effort at Penn State University has branched out into new directions, said Kyle Bowen, director of education technology services. PSU's BBookX takes a human-assisted computing approach to enable creation of open source textbooks. The technology uses algorithms to explore OER repositories and return relevant resources that can be combined, remixed and re-used to support learning goals. As instructors and students add materials to a book, BBookX learns and further refines the recommended material. Bowen explained that the work was inspired to some degree by more nefarious uses of machine learning. Looking at examples of researchers using algorithms to generate fake research papers begged the question: If you can do something like that to create fake research papers, could you use it to create real ones or real content? "What better problem to try to solve than looking at open content?" he said. "How could we simplify or expedite the process of generating a textbook or a textbook replacement?" In the process of training machines to search for appropriate content, the PSU researchers discovered that algorithms often surface content the faculty member may not have known about. Even if you are an expert in a topic area, there are still elements of the field you may not be as familiar with, and the algorithm is not biased by knowledge you already have. Describing the process of fine-tuning the algorithm, Bowen said it works less like a Google search and more like a Netflix recommendation. "With a Google search, you provide a term, and if you don't like the results you change your terms. Here you are changing how the machine is thinking about those terms," he explained. "You are telling it 'more like this, less like that,' and you keep iterating. It begins to focus on what you are looking for and what you mean by that term. It goes by the meaning the faculty member is trying to get to." Next Steps Although PSU is continuing its work on the OER textbook project, Bowen said, "What we uncovered was that using this machine learning approach to generate textbooks was potentially one of the least interesting things we could do with it." The institution's data scientists have moved into three other areas with the intent of taking on even more complex issues: 1) Prerequisite knowledge. In terms of sequencing how material is presented, machine learning might help instructors understand the prerequisite knowledge a person would need in order to understand a particular body of text. "We want to make sure that as you are coming into a class, the prerequisite knowledge has already been introduced," Bowen said. "You could do that yourself by charting out the concepts to see how they relate across the material. But in this case, the machine can more effectively construct concept maps and identify disconnects inside of them." 2) Generating assessment questions. Anybody who has crafted a multiple-choice midterm or final exam knows how challenging it is to make it representative of the work and create distractors to effectively assess understanding of a topic. PSU is working on a prototype algorithm that, given an OER chapter or a textbook, can suggest multiple-choice assessments. "This gets into an area of machine learning called adversarial learning, which comes out of security. It is how the computer identifies spam messages," Bowen said. Spam e-mails aren't real e-mails, although they are trying to look like they are — they are trying to exploit a vulnerability. With the creation of a spam filter, machine learning identifies pattern matches. "We want to do the opposite," he said. "We want to identify things that don't fit the pattern but look like they would. What are some things that might exploit gaps in someone's knowledge? What we have found is the machine creates really difficult multiple-choice tests. It shows very little mercy." PSU has not yet begun testing this solution with faculty. "It is important to explain that it is not the goal to replace what the person is doing, but rather to assist the faculty member," Bowen said. The goal would not be to have the machine generate multiple choice assessments on the fly, but to help a faculty member craft a multiple choice test that is representative of the material and help simplify the process of creating those tests, he added. The same is true with prerequisite knowledge. It is not to replace the work being done by faculty members, but to support them as they think about prerequisite knowledge. 3) Brainstorming with your computer. A third conceptual area PSU is working on is letting the computer help you brainstorm. "We all have friends who are really smart and who we go to to bounce ideas off of," Bowen said. Such a friend might ask if you have thought about other concepts. "You can do that with your computer," he explained. If you are thinking about a topic, the machine can say, "well based on that, have you thought about x?" It can help you brainstorm an activity and also form or prototype ideas and come out with a concept map or outline that helps you explore new areas. "So although the original algorithm was designed to generate texts, when we look at it, these three areas are potentially higher value problems to work on. We have moved away from our original research to look at how we can provide more targeted assistance on pain points in developing OER material." About the Author David Raths is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer focused on information technology. He writes regularly for several IT publications, including Healthcare Informatics and Government Technology.  ... View more

Clickers can dramatically improve your students’ engagement in the classroom. But, like all teaching tools, there are more and less effective ways of incorporating them into your class. This webinar will include a brief review of the motivations for using clickers, as well as practical guidelines for ensuring their success, including writing effective questions, facilitating student discussion and choosing a grading policy that minimizes stress for you and your students. Enrollment will be limited to ensure all participants have time to ask questions and share experiences. Watch Recording ... View more

Join Macmillan's Learning Science & Insights team as they share new research and insights on attendance. In this webinar, Dr. Kara McWilliams, Vice President, Impact Research, will discuss the learning science behind the benefits of taking class attendance and what trends sophisticated data mining reveal that have guided the development of new attendance features in iClicker. Dr. McWilliams will also share experimental research conducted with instructors and partner institutions into how using iClicker to take attendance improves important student outcomes like engagement and course performance. Watch Recording ... View more

Studies show that engaging students through activities, discussion and collaboration is more effective than traditional lecturing. iClicker is pleased to invite you to an Composition & Literature-specific webinar led by Blake Westerlund. Attend this webinar to learn key strategies, ideas and best practices as they relate to the English classroom! Watch Recording ... View more

Studies show that engaging students through activities, discussion and collaboration is more effective than traditional lecturing. iClicker is pleased to invite you to a Developmental English-specific webinar led by Natalie Dougall, Faculty Advocate and Trainer for iClicker. Attend this webinar to learn key strategies, ideas and best practices as they relate to the English classroom! Watch Recording ... View more

Studies show that engaging students through activities, discussion and collaboration is more effective than traditional lecturing. In this webinar, Brandon Tenn, PhD, Professor of Chemistry and Math at Merced College shares key strategies, ideas and best practices as they relate to the modern Chemistry classroom! Watch Recording ... View more

As seen on CNN, NBC and the Discovery Channel, rock star instructor Dr. Kate Biberdorf shares best practices on planning and executing active learning strategies that engage students for deeper learning.     Watch Recording ... View more

Student engagement and affordability are hot topics on most campuses of higher education. In this webinar, Leif Nelson, Director of Learning Technology Solutions at Boise State University, will discuss these important topics, and will share specific examples and initiatives of how Boise State is addressing these challenges to help their students succeed. Watch Recording ... View more

Using a student engagement tool integrated into your campus learning management system can help engage students and help you measure student performance. Join Dr. Leslie Hendrix, Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina and active learning guru, as she shares her best practices from using both the iClicker student engagement tool and Canvas learning management system in her own classroom. Watch Recording ... View more

Student Response systems are traditionally thought of as in-class tools. And why not? They are great for creating connections, improving student focus, identifying misconceptions, and giving every student a voice. But there are a variety of ways that schools are beginning to use Student Response systems. Dr. Kimi King of the University of North Texas will present some ways that she uses iClicker Cloud (the Student Response System at UNT) in creative, out of the box ways. This presentation is ideal for faculty or administrators interested in adopting a SRS for the institution, and how to maximize that investment. Watch Recording ... View more

While the benefits of a classroom response system in large lecture halls may be obvious, those same benefits can be obtained in smaller, more intimate class of 30 or fewer students. Led by Brian Geislinger of Gadsden State Community College, this webinar will discuss both how iClicker can be effectively used in small classes, as well as the unique challenges that active learning techniques in a smaller group can present. Watch Recording ... View more

Enhance the level of learning in your classroom by asking higher level questions for problem solving, making connections, and peer interaction. This webinar, led by Cindy Albert of the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire, will provide tips for creating question prompts, as well as how to craft the follow up questions to encourage deeper learning. Watch Recording ... View more

Data-Driven Instruction: How to Optimize Student Analytics Charles Rigdon and Eric Aldrich at the University of Missouri–Columbia are two seasoned, data-driven professionals who utilize a variety of technology tools to report on student success.   In this webinar, they will show you how they've used student response systems data and student retention software to track students' progression throughout their coursework. They will also discuss how those tools can measure student comprehension in individual courses and flag struggling students who need personalized support.     Watch Recording ... View more