Learning Systems

Checklist

• If you are teaching in a classroom equipped with an iclicker base station, do you have a key to the AV cabinet?
  If not, contact your department and request one.
• If you are teaching in a classroom that is not equipped with an iclicker base station, have you borrowed one from Learning Systems and have you tested it with your laptop?
  If not, refer to the page on trying out iclickers or to the one on adopting iclickers. 
• Do you have a master clicker (a.k.a. an instructor's clicker) so that you can remotely start and stop polling, as well as display and hide polling results?
  If not, contact Learning Systems and request one.
• Do you have the latest version of the iClicker (essential) and iGrader (optional) applications for your PC or Mac?
  If not, download the software package and unzip it to a USB stick (preferable) or to your laptop's hard drive.
• Have you configured the iClicker application for the specific course that you are going to teach?
  If not, refer to the instructions below.

1. Open the directory (folder) to which you unpacked (unzipped) the iClicker software package. This should preferably be on a USB stick (thumb drive) for portability.
   
2. Make sure you have a connection to the internet and run the WebUpdate application. (If you don't see it right away, open the "iclicker Win" or "iclicker Mac" directory, depending on whether you're using, well, a PC or a Mac.) If any updates are available, click the relevant upgrade button (Upgrade i>clicker, Upgrade i>grader or Upgrade Both Applications). This is very important, as each new version of these applications resolves issues that have been identified.
   
3. Now run the iClicker application.
4. In the first window, click on Add Course.
   
5. Fill out the fields for course name, course number and section number (you can type anything you want in any of these fields). Click on the Create button.
   
6. Now select the course you have created and click on Choose.
   
7. In the next window, click on Your Settings and Preferences.
   
8. In the General tab, type your master clicker's serial number into the field labelled Instructor's Remote ID.
   
9. Next, click on the Polling Session tab and change the setting under Polling Timer, if you wish. (You can have the timer count up until you manually end a polling session, or you can have it count down from a certain number of seconds and end the polling session automatically.)
   
10. You don't need to set anything in the Registration and Export or Scoring tabs unless you intend to assign marks for voting in class, or if you want to be able to generate polling reports containing students' names and NetLink IDs rather than just iclicker remote serial numbers (which will always be recorded any time a polling session is under way and a remote is clicked). For information on configuring the iClicker application for these specific purposes, please refer to the page on grading with iclickers.
11. Finally, click on Set for Course. (If you click on Set for this Session, you will need to change the configurations all over again the next time you run iClicker.) You can now close the iClicker application and are ready to use it in class.

Conducting polling sessions

Asking a question with iClicker

Once you have configured iClicker for your course, just follow the steps below to start conducting electronic polling sessions.

1. Start the iClicker application, which by now you will probably have on your flash drive (a.k.a. USB stick or thumb drive).
   
2. If you have set up more than one course in iClicker, select the appropriate one and click on "Choose".
   
3. On the main screen, click on "Start Session"; this will not cause iClicker to start polling right away.
   
4. If you want to display an image or the question itself on the screen using PowerPoint, Acrobat or any other application, you can do that now. The iClicker control bar should stay on the screen, on top of everything else. You can move the drag the control bar with your mouse to a different location on the screen.
   
5. In order to start polling (i.e. indicate to the iclicker base station that it should begin receiving votes), you can either use your mouse to click on "START" in the iClicker control bar or, more conveniently, use your master (instructor's) remote and click once on the "START/STOP POLLING" button (letter A).
   
   Please note that if the timer is counting up (refer to step 9 in previous section), you will need to manually stop polling by clicking "STOP" on the control bar or pressing the "START/STOP POLLING" button (letter A) again on the master remote. Note also that students can change their votes as many times as they wish while polling is under way; only the last button clicked on a student's remote is recorded by the iClicker system.
6. At any point during or after polling you can click "DISPLAY" on the control bar or press "HIDE/DISPLAY GRAPH" on the master remote to – what else? – display (or hide) a graph showing aggregate student responses. If polling is still under way, this graph will change in real time as students submit or change their votes, so unless you have a very specific goal in mind, it is not a good idea to display the graph until after polling has stopped.
   

Anonymous polling questions

There are situations in which your students may feel more comfortable participating in class if they know that their iclicker-submitted answers are not being linked to their names. Sensitive topics such as sexual behaviour, religious beliefs and political views would normally warrant anonymous polling questions.

Asking an anonymous question with the iClicker system is very simple: just follow the instructions in the previous section, then click on the down arrow on the right-hand side of the control bar and select "Anonymous Question", as in the screen shot below.

IClicker will keep track of which students have answered the question, but will not record their actual answer, so you would still be able to assign participation marks to anonymous questions.