# 1 - The Basics: Setting Up and Starting i>clicker

# Start a Polling Session

After creating a course you are ready to start a session and begin polling. Once polling is started, students can begin answering your polling questions with their i>clicker remotes.

| NOTE: If any of your students are using i>clicker GO (mobile clickers) in your class, you must enable i>clicker GO before you begin polling (see i>clicker GO Settings for setup instructions).

### To begin polling:

1. Create or select a course from the Welcome to i>clicker window.
2. The i>clicker Home screen appears. Click the Start Session button.
   The i>clicker Home screen
3. The i>clicker Home screen disappears and the Session Toolbar appears in the top-left corner of your screen, indicating that i>clicker is active. You can reposition the toolbar anywhere on your desktop.
   i>clicker Session Toolbar
4. When you are ready to start polling, advise your students to turn on their clickers, present the question and answer choices (either verbally or visually)
5. If the question type shown on the Start button does not match the question you are asking, click the drop-down menu option attached to the button to change the question type.
   Toolbar with question type menu expanded

| NOTE: If you are using a base receiver running v3.03 firmware or earlier, only A-E questions are supported and the drop-down menu will not appear.

6. Click the Start button to begin polling. When polling is active, the Start button switches to a Stop button and a timer appears. A counter on the far right of the toolbar displays how many students have voted.
   Active i>clicker Session Toolbar

| NOTE: If students vote when polling is inactive, the Vote Status light on their remotes will flash red three times to indicate their votes were not received (i>clicker remote) or they will see a CLOSED message on their LCD (i>clicker2 remote).

| TIP: If you use presentation software to display your questions (e.g., PowerPoint or Keynote), make sure it's the active application when you start polling by clicking on the presentation window. Each time polling begins, i>clicker captures a screenshot of the active window and stores it along with polling results for later review in i>grader.

7. If desired, click the Results button on the toolbar to show a graph of the class responses. See Viewing Student Responses for more details.
8. Repeat steps 4 - 6 for each question you ask in class. When you are finished polling, close the Session Toolbar by clicking the Close (x) button in the top left corner of the toolbar.

| TIP: You can use an instructor's remote to control polling from anywhere in the room. (See Instructor's Remote ID in General Settings.)