iClicker Cloud: Running an iClicker Cloud Session
Running an iClicker Cloud Session
This guide covers the following steps needed to run an iClicker Cloud session:
- Prepare For Your Lecture
- Launch iClicker Cloud
- iClicker Cloud Toolbar
- Start a Poll (Support video included)
- Start a Quiz (Support video included)
- End Session / Exit Poll
Prepare For Your Lecture
iClicker is designed to collect student responses and cannot be used to build questions for the students. To ensure a smooth workflow when conducting an online class that has an iClicker session there are several components that you will require. They are as follows:
- A separate way to show questions during your lecture e.g. PowerPoint slides, PDF.
You can use any application, as iClicker Cloud does not require the questions to be in any particular application. Note that iClicker Cloud will automatically take a snapshot of how you display your question during the lecture and:- send this image to students to view when they respond to the question and
- store this image for your reference when reviewing results.
- A web-conferencing application to run the lecture e.g. Zoom.
It is not necessary to share your screen over the web-conferencing application, for example, sharing PowerPoint slides using Zoom. If you decide to share your screen, ensure that the current question is displayed in the area of the screen that is being shared. - The iClicker Cloud application to collect student responses.
This can be accessed by the iClicker Cloud toolbar floating at the top of your screen to manually start and stop collecting student responses for each poll (if you are asking a single question) or quiz (if you are asking a collection of multiple-choice questions) that you share.
Launch iClicker Cloud
There are two options to launch iClicker Cloud to start running a session. Both options require that you have the desktop application installed on your computer.
- From the instructor website
- From the desktop application
Both options are presented below.
Option 1: From the instructor website
- Log in to your instructor account at instructor.reef-education.com.
Links to an external site.
- Select the course that you want to run a polling/quizzing session in.
- Click Start Class at the top left of the page. If you have attendance on, (which we recommend against), the attendance popup lets you choose whether you will let students join from anywhere or from a specific location. For remote learning purposes, choose the Yes, start attendance option.
- Select Start Poll or Start Quiz in the active class session box that opens at the top right.
- This will launch the iClicker Cloud desktop software. Note that the desktop application must be closed if you want to launch iClicker Cloud using the website. Only one instance of iClicker Cloud can run at a time.
Option 2: From the desktop application
- Sign in to the iClicker desktop software on your computer and hover over the course that you would like to use for your polling session.
- Click Start Class. This will open the iClicker toolbar. You can move the toolbar around to place it where you like and you can also collapse it by clicking the blue cloud icon.
Once all these applications are open, the typical workflow will involve using the screen-sharing feature in your web-conferencing application (e.g. Zoom or Collaborate Ultra) to display your question(s) over video and using the iClicker Cloud toolbar to control when to start/stop a poll or a quiz.
iClicker Cloud Toolbar
After clicking the Start Class button, the iClicker Cloud toolbar opens with your activity options displayed as icons. You can switch between these options without ending the session.
- Toggle to minimize/maximize
- Open polling
- Open quizzing
- View attendees
- End class
Start a Poll
The difference between polls and quizzes are the number of questions answered at once. While polls are answered one question at a time, a quiz allows students to go back and forth and choose answers for many questions, and submit all of the answers at once. Quizzes only allow multiple choice questions, whereas polls allow a variety of question types.
- Click the Polling icon on the class toolbar. This will open the polling toolbar.
- Choose a question to present to the class. With the question displayed on your screen and the desired question type selected, click the green Play button in the polling toolbar to start the poll.
- To end a polling question, click the red Stop icon.
- Select the Results icon from the iClicker Cloud toolbar to display the student responses. You can grade the question by clicking on the correct answer(s) on the results chart. If you don’t want to grade questions in class, you can always view and grade questions after class on the iClicker Instructor Website (see iClicker Cloud: Managing and Grading Sessions ).
By default, every poll starts with the question type set to Multiple Choice. You can change the question type by clicking the drop-down menu on the Polling toolbar and choosing the desired question type from the list.
- Multiple Choice - Students select a letter response. While students can only select one response, you can select multiple responses as correct when grading.
- Short Answer - Students send an open response of up to 140 characters, including punctuation and most symbols.
- Numeric - Students respond with open-ended numeric values that include up to eight digits plus a decimal point and support scientific notation and exponents.
- Target Questions - Students answer by clicking or tapping part of an image.
If you would like to run an anonymous poll, select anonymous polling by clicking the menu icon (the three horizontal dots on the right side of the polling toolbar) and selecting Anonymous.
This will change the polling toolbar to a dark gray color to indicate you are in anonymous mode.
Your polls will remain in anonymous mode until you switch your toolbar back to regular polling by clicking the menu icon and turning anonymous polling off.
See the following video "Running Polls with iClicker Cloud" for more information:
Start a Quiz
The difference between polls and quizzes are the number of questions answered at once. While polls are answered one question at a time, a quiz allows students to go back and forth and choose answers for many questions, and submit all of the answers at once. Quizzes only allow multiple choice questions.
For a quiz, you must display all the questions to the students, as iClicker Cloud does not take screenshots when running a quiz. Click on the each of the steps below for details.
- Step 1: Enter quiz details
- Step 2: Start/stop quiz
- Step 3: View results
- Step 4: Select correct answers
Step 1: Enter quiz details
- While the questions are displayed, click the Quizzing icon in the class toolbar. This will bring up the Quizzing Setup window.
- In the Quizzing Setup window, enter the number of questions on the quiz. You can also modify the Quiz Name and Points per Question on this screen.
- Click Start. This will bring up the Quizzing toolbar.
Step 2: Start/stop quiz
- To start a quiz, click on the green Play button.
- After you click the Play button, the Quizzing toolbar will show you how much time has elapsed in the quizzing activity and how many students have submitted responses.
- To end a quiz, click the red Stop button. The quiz activity cannot be restarted after it has ended. If a student fails to submit their quiz, any responses they chose before the activity closed will be recorded.
Step 3: View results
- After you stop a quiz, you can show the class how everyone responded by clicking on the Results icon.
- You will get a warning that you are about to show the quiz results. If you do want to show the class the results click on View Answers & Results.
Step 4: Select correct answers
If you don’t want to grade quizzes in class, you can always view and grade quizzes after class on the iClicker Instructor Website (see iClicker Cloud: Managing and Grading Sessions).- To grade a question, simply click on the correct answer(s). Correct answers will turn green. A check mark will also appear below the correct response and a "Graded" badge is shown next to the question number
- The comment section can be to provide feedback on question to the students.
- Check the box next to Share results and feedback after the quiz ends if you want to allow students to see responses per question, access feedback, and view graded results. Otherwise, students will only see their total points for the quiz.
- When you are finished with the results panel, click the Results icon on the toolbar to hide it.
See the following video "Running Quizzes with iClicker Cloud" for more information:
End Session with an Exit Poll (Optional)
When all questions are complete, the session must be closed. End the session by clicking on the End Class Session X icon in the class toolbar.
If the polling toolbar is open, click on the left arrow to go back to the class toolbar, and then click on the End Class Session X icon.
When a polling session is closed, there is an option to end the session with an Exit Poll Links to an external site. to gather post-class feedback from students. To end the class, click on End Class. To end the class with an exit poll, click on End Class with Exit Poll.
To learn more about iClicker, contact ctl.helpdesk@ubc.ca.
Updated December 2020