Why and how to migrate from Clickers to Acadly
The “trick” to take your questions from your Powerpoint slides to Acadly in a minute
What are clickers and why are they fast becoming obsolete
Clickers were the primary way to poll students in the classroom for years before software alternatives like Acadly started replacing them. The way to use clickers is to put multiple-choice questions up on the screen for the students to see, who can select an option by ‘clicking’ the corresponding button on their clicker device (which look and work like TV remotes). Instructors can view the overall poll results and the option(s) selected by every student.
Software alternatives (called Student Response Systems or SRSs) offer enhancements that can help instructors engage students in several ways other than simple polls and quizzes. We have summarized many of the advantages here, but to list some of them:
- Software solutions include more activity types like automatically graded quizzes, word clouds, and discussions
- Backchannels or live Q&A help instructors get questions from students
- Attendance automation technologies like Acadly’s mesh-network based attendance tech are more secure and less prone to use of dishonest means
- Software solutions include more question types than the typical multiple-choice questions
- All questions/ results stay available for students after the lecture too
- SRSs can be used to post activities for student engagement outside the classroom too
- Students can participate even if they are not able to attend in-person, which has been a huge factor in their adoption during the pandemic
Check out our infographic on this topic
In addition to these factors, software solutions could include a number of other options such as Acadly’s Zoom integration, interactive lecture playback, scheduling, automatic reminders, and a lot more. It is not surprising that COVID-19 has only increased the demand for engagement solutions that do not assume in-person presence and offer more in terms of interactivity features.
It is surprisingly easy to migrate away from clickers. Here’s a video demo.
The biggest issue with using any new technology is the migration from the old to the new. However, given the way clickers work, it is incredibly simple to migrate following this process (description below the video).
Step 1 — Export Powerpoint slides as images
Open the presentation(s) containing your clicker questions and export the slides as images. The option is under File > Save As (PC) or File > Export (Mac).
When exporting, use the Save Every Slide option to export all the slides into images at once. Keep all the slides with clicker questions in one place.
Step 2 — Insert question slides as images into Acadly questions
Use the insert image in the question field (shown below) to insert the question slide into Acadly.
No typing, no fuss.
Step 3 — Reuse activities in Acadly courses
Once you’ve added your questions to Acadly quizzes/polls, you can reuse them across lectures and courses easily using Acadly’s copy activity and copy course (bulk copy) features.
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That’s it! That’s the blog post! 🙂
Happy migrating.
