We asked some of our super users how iClicker helped them demonstrate the value of education to their students. Here’s what they had to say: “Macmillan tools help me create a blended learning classroom where I can focus on honest discussions, emphasize how the material connects to their lived experiences, and provide meaningful assignments targeting technology-mediated competencies.” Matthew Ingram, Dakota State University “Indirectly, the engaging materials display the joy of learning. It's not a statement, but an experience that students have when interacting with the materials.” Jillene Seiver, Eastern Washington University  “I find that iClicker is a wonderful tool for creating a more interactive learning experience for my students. It helps them stop and think about what they have been learning in class and because of the way in which they don't have to reveal themselves by raising their hands to answer a question, they become more comfortable with their uncertainty and more open to learning.” Jeffrey Henriques, University of Wisconsin Looking for more ideas? Schedule a demo or training to discuss how iClicker could support your class. ... View more

We asked some of our super users how iClicker helped them support academic integrity in their classrooms. Here’s what they had to say: “Quiet or less confident students aren't as likely to participate in Socratic method or cold calling. The use of iClicker allows ALL students to participate including those who are less confident or quiet. The inclusiveness is refreshing and allows the instructor to determine where everyone is in their understanding.” -Candace Timpte, Biology “With iClicker questions that students have difficulty with, I will sometimes stop class and have them discuss their answers with their neighbors and then answer again. I will sometimes use anonymous mode when asking questions that are of a sensitive nature so that students don't feel exposed by their answers. I am also using Achieve in the hopes of boosting student performance by helping students see the connections between the questions and the textbook.” -Jeff Henriques, Psychology "We use iClicker in our seminar sessions consisting of about 30 students. Being able to participate anonymously and with the click of a button on their smartphone ensures that all students are able to participate and express their opinions (not just students who are more actively engaged or outspoken) without fear of judgment." -Marissa Dahari, Molecular Biology Interested in ways you might be able to use iClicker to foster an environment where every student belongs and has a chance to participate? Check out 10 Tips to Foster Equity Through Technology. Still looking for more ideas? Schedule a demo or training to discuss how iClicker could support your class. ... View more

We asked some of our super users how iClicker helped them support academic integrity in their classrooms. Here’s what they had to say: “While not seeking to identify potential academic misuse, I use iClicker attendance to  promote timely arrival in class, and polling to ensure that students learn critical facets of all my courses.” -Michael Shapiro, Georgia State University “We use iClicker in the classroom both to inform our teaching and to assess students.” -Ed Lee, Texas A&M “Active learning is extremely important and iClicker makes this possible. More, iClicker facilitates the idea of "skin-in-the-game" with a minimal time investment by the instructor… Lastly, the fact that multiple, numeric, and short answers as well as heat maps are possible is truly a game changer as we can now break free from the constraints and mindsets imposed by multiple-choice questions.”-Mihai Paraschiv, SUNY College at Oswego Interested in ways you might be able to use iClicker to foster an environment where students can practice concepts in a low stakes way and minimize the stress that can lead to cheating? Consider encouraging your students to use Study Tools as a way to prepare without pressure--with no work on your part! Looking for more ideas? Schedule a demo or training to discuss how iClicker could support your class. ... View more

How iClicker Helps Me Be Flexible, Nimble & Inspired in Multiple Modalities Presentation by Solina Lindahl: California Polytech State University - San Luis Obispo, Economics In this presentation, we hear from the Economics Department lead at Cali Poly State - SLO, Solina Lindahl on how to use iClicker in multiple modalities with teamwork. In a learning environment where professors and students alike are inundated with new classroom technology, it's important to stay flexible, nimble, and inspired. This presentation not only highlights iClicker features that maximize active learning, growth mindsets, student engagement, and a sense of community--but also highlights the importance of turning to learning science and research when designing a course. Watch the presentation below to learn more tips and tricks for implementing active learning with iClicker in your course.  Watch the Presentation Solina Lindahl is the Economics Lead (Cali) and services in the CSU Chancellor's Office. She is a committee faculty rep and co-lead for Equity Learning Community. She serves as the co-lead for Cal Poly's Center for Teaching's "Redesigning the large lecture." Solina is also a faculty mentor and regular recipient of the "Economics Faculty of the Year" award.  ... View more

It's almost time to bring your students back to campus! iClicker makes it easy to create a welcoming, interactive classroom. This webinar is for iClicker users, old and new, who want to know what's new with iClicker and get a tour of features like Focus Mode and Anonymous questions. We’ll also discuss ways you can use iClicker in your classroom, whether it’s a traditional brick-and-mortar classroom or a hybrid approach. REGISTER NOW! ... View more

The faster you can onboard your students, the sooner you can make your classroom an active learning classroom. Check out how you can use Quick Join to get students up and running with iClicker in about a minute. Once your students are up and running, explore some easy activity ideas for your first iClicker sessions! You can quickly onboard your students in your iClicker class in three easy steps. First, create your iClicker course, then click on the Settings area of the course. There, you’ll find your Quick Join code. Share this Quick Join code with your students and they will take the process over from there! Once students log into iClicker, your course will be automatically added to their iClicker account and they will be ready to answer your iClicker questions! Once you have your students ready to go, it can be nice to ask a few questions to help students build confidence with this new tool. We have lots of different activities you can try with your students no matter what discipline you may be teaching. You can welcome students to class with an entrance tickets or try one of our trivia decks to help build your classroom community. ... View more

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

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 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

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

Starting each of your classes with an iClicker entrance ticket helps settle your students into class and frame their brains for learning. An entrance ticket is simply an open-ended iClicker question you ask students at the start of class. We’ve put together a deck of entrance tickets that can be used in any discipline. Simply ask one of these questions using an iClicker short-answer polling question while you and your students get ready for class. Asking questions like, “What was most memorable about our last class meeting?” doesn’t take much effort on your part, but it can have a large impact on your students. These open-ended questions encourage your students to think back and access memories of prior learning experiences, uniquely framing their brains for new learning experiences. Other questions can encourage your students to think about projects outside of class or upcoming exams. The results of these polls will also give you a unique running insight into what your students are learning, remembering and where they may need additional guidance. Habitually using entrance tickets will also help your students check into iClicker and ensure they are counted as present with iClicker Attendance. Lastly, try and end your class with an iClicker Exit Poll to easily bookend your classes with iClicker. With an iClicker Exit Poll, students are asked to rate their understanding of the day’s class. They also are able to ask if there is anything that they would like explained further. And bonus-- adding both of these activities to your lesson plans shouldn’t take away from your time with your students. ... View more

As this term draws to a close, you may be looking backward to see what worked and what needs work for next term. Here are some ways you can use iClicker to gather feedback from your students and ways you can use the iClicker data you’ve already gathered to reflect on your lesson plans: 1. Use iClicker Assignments to ask students for course feedback You can easily ask your students for feedback by creating an iClicker Assignment and asking students to respond, perhaps as an extra credit assignment. You can allow students to respond with short answer for detailed feedback, though you’ll want to remind students that their feedback is not anonymous. We’ve created a PDF of questions you can use to gather your students’ ideas. 2. Use iClicker Anonymous polling questions for informal course evaluations You may also want to “take the pulse” of your class in your last class meetings by using our Anonymous question mode to get some frank feedback from your students. Using multiple-choice questions will keep students focused and make feedback collection quick. We’ve created a deck of iClicker questions you can ask your students in order to get some quick and easy feedback. 3. Review your iClicker activity, looking for trends and patterns You don’t have to do a fancy deep-dive into your data to learn a few things from your iClicker trends. Was attendance set to autorun? If so, you can look over your attendance data to look for your days of lowest and highest attendance. If you use iClicker polling regularly, you can look and see if polling has had any impacts on your attendance rates. You should also consider how much feedback you’re giving students and how difficult your questions are. Consider this activity along with a look back at your larger lesson plans to see areas where iClicker could be an even more dynamic tool in your classroom.   ... View more

The introduction of a group project assignment can be met with a chorus of groans from your students. Group projects are often necessary for our classes. They’re also good preparation for your students’ futures in the workplace. Most students picture their future work life as highly independent but the truth is, most jobs rely on employees working in groups constantly. Here’s how you can use iClicker to manage group projects more effectively and help your students value the learning experience more. Sorting Into Groups Instructors often turn to group work when they want their students to gain experience collaborating with new people. However, when students self-select their partners, they generally pick the same students with whom they feel most familiar. Using iClicker to form groups can shake up a classroom and inspire new relationships in the classroom. Try an activity where you open a multiple-choice poll and click on the results before your students vote. Challenge your students to “balance the bars” Once the bars are balanced (and this can take a while!) ask all the students who voted A to gather in one spot, all the students who voted B to gather in another spot, and so on. This can break your class up in a new way and easily segue into a more dynamic group. iClicker is Ideal for Groups of Two Peer Instruction (PI) is a proven way to move students from passive observation to active learning. With this student-centered type of instruction, students learn by explaining core concepts to each other under the guidance of their instructor. Encourage students to Think, Pair, Share. First, challenge them to Think with an iClicker question. Instead of revealing the correct answer, ask students to Pair with another student who has a different answer. Challenge students to come to a consensus on the correct answer, then Share their results with the class. When you display the results the first time, instruct your students to find peers who picked a different answer. This enlivens your classrooms and encourages students to make connections with more of their classmates. Managing Polling Activities in Groups Often students work on problem sets or complex challenges in group settings. Unfortunately, some groups see finishing the exercises as the goal instead of exploring the materials deeply and coming to a consensus. On the other hand, some groups dawdle and fail to finish the work due to shyness or other factors. With iClicker, your students work on one question at a time, keeping the class in sync with each other. To keep answers from the same group together, use Short Answer as your response type and ask students to respond with their group name at the start of their response. This will easily group responses together while requiring every student to stay engaged in the group activity. Using Assignments for Group Work iClicker Assignments makes it easy to keep group work separate from the polling questions you’re already asking in your classes. With Assignments, groups of students are able to work through a set of iClicker questions on their devices at their own pace. Students can work through a lab activity, answer a set of discussion questions, or conduct a peer review of course writing and they can do it in groups, no matter where the group is located. iClicker Assignments work for groups in your physical classroom or with breakout groups online! ... View more

Adding iClicker questions to your lecture deck is an easy process but coming up with content can be challenging. As you work on writing iClicker polling questions, ask yourself the following questions: What higher-order thinking does this iClicker question require? Sometimes we want to know if students simply remember a concept, but we want to use iClicker questions to emphasize skills like analysis and application. Instead of asking a question that only requires a good memory (“What are the three parts of the brain?”), ask questions that require memory as well as higher-order thinking (“What part of Janice’s brain is most active when she reminisces about a walk across a balance beam?”) What wrong conclusions do my students often come to when faced with this kind of question? Identify the common wrong conclusions students come to and include them as tempting wrong answers in your multiple-choice questions. This gives you the opportunity to address misconceptions directly. It also increases the difficulty level of your questions. How many of my students are going to get this iClicker question wrong? A good polling question presents a real challenge to your students. No one likes when a game is too easy! This also creates an opportunity for a Think-Pair-Share activity. Ask your students an iClicker question but don’t reveal the correct answer. Instead, display the results and have students work in pairs to try and convince one another of the correct answer. Ask the same polling question again to see how their responses have shifted. This will give students a chance to learn by doing and you the chance to observe their thinking process. How does this connect to my quizzes and exams? Students find iClicker questions particularly valuable when they can clearly connect their iClicker questions to the questions they’re asked on more formal assessments. Retired assessments can be a great place to find fresh iClicker questions as well. ... View more