Teaching with ClassIn guide
ClassIn overview
Unlike business conferencing software such as Zoom, ClassIn is specifically designed for online teaching. It is one of the most popular online classroom software programs in China and rapidly gaining recognition worldwide.
Key advantages:
- Specifically designed for online teaching.
- Built-in games and activities, including quizzes, dice, virtual science experiments, etc.
- Reorganise your students’ faces on the screen, including positioning over your slides (e.g. to set up a dialogue) or creating debate-style layouts.
- Students can interact directly with slides during screensharing.
- Option to browse the web or directly upload slides and files to the classroom itself, rather than just screensharing.
- Built-in rewards system (give students “trophies” as prizes).
- Built-in feedback system which automatically sends class stats to students after class.
- Built-in messaging and scheduling system, for easy communications outside of class time.
- Available on computers, iPads and mobile devices.
- Save lesson recordings to your computer.
- Great value for money – the free version is sufficient for most online teachers, and the pro version is an affordable per-class fee.
Limitations:
- Screensharing options are very limited – for example, it’s not possible just to share a portion of the screen.
- It can be quite “clunky” to allow students to interact directly with slides using ClassIn’s “give mouse control” option.
- The free version restricts classes to just 40 minutes with a maximum of two students.
- The full range of features, particularly the “give mouse control” tool during screensharing, are only available if both you and your students are on computers.
- ClassIn is very resource intensive – you and your students need a computer with good processing power and fast Wifi.
Pro features (not a complete list):
- Unlimited duration for classes
- Record lessons to the cloud (more convenient for sharing with students)
This guide will answer some common questions for teachers using ClassIn and share helpful tips for using the Abridge Academy resources on ClassIn. Ready to get started with ClassIn? Get 20% off your premium subscription here!
IMPORTANT: Authorising students
Before you start the class, make sure you have authorised students to access the ClassIn tools (annotation etc).
You can do this by clicking the crown button under their video. It is generally best to just keep this turned on throughout the class, unless the student is being disruptive.
Screen sharing and direct student interaction
When using the Abridge Academy resources with students who are using computers, we recommend using the “multidirectional screen share” (Mac) or “teacher screen share” (PC) options.
This will share your whole screen with the student. Open up your web browser and maximise the lesson slides so they take up the full screen.
Once you are sharing your screen, you can allow the student to interact directly with the slides (including clicking and drag-and-drop tasks) by hovering your mouse towards the top of the screen and selecting “allow students to click”.
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Direct interaction (students clicking on the slides) is only available if both you and your students are on computers. If you do not see the option for them to click, it is usually because they are on an iPad or other incompatible device.
Alternatively, you may be using the wrong screensharing option – make sure you selected “multidirectional screen share” or “teacher screen share” as described above.
Unfortunately ClassIn requires particularly high processing power and Wifi speeds. If your screenshared content appears laggy or stuttered, usually this is due to either yourself or the student using an older/ slower device or having poor Wifi.
Browser sharing
An alternative option is to open the Abridge Academy website within ClassIn’s built-in web browser and navigate to the lesson slides there.
We have found that this is often less laggy than the screensharing option, and allows you to more easily combine the slides with other content on your ClassIn blackboard (e.g. using their built-in games) or use the other features of ClassIn.
However, when sharing the Abridge Academy slides through ClassIn’s built-in browser, it is not possible for students to directly click on the slides or do the drag-and-drop activities. You can only do this from the teacher’s side.
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Unfortunately ClassIn’s browser only allows drag-and-drop interaction from the teacher’s end. It is not possible for students to directly interact with the slides.
This is a limitation of ClassIn, unfortunately Abridge Academy cannot control this. Please contact ClassIn to encourage them to add support for this feature – if enough of us request it they might boost it up the priority list!
We had this problem initially when opening the slides – this is caused by ClassIn’s browser not properly communicating to the website to say what size its screen is. Simply try flicking between a few slides and resizing the ClassIn browser a bit. This seemed to fix it!
Make sure you have selected “share sound” at the top of the ClassIn browser.
Other useful features
ClassIn rewards
One of the best features of ClassIn is it’s built-in rewards feature. Throughout the class, you can simply click on the trophy under a student’s video to give them a virtual reward.
Students accumulate trophies throughout the class, and this also appears in the automatically generated lesson report.
ClassIn tools
ClassIn also has many additional tools you can use in your lessons. These include:
- Writing, drawing or adding pictures to the whiteboard;
- Uploading files (worksheets, slides, etc) to the whiteboard;
- Dice (great for games!);
- Countdown timer and stopclock;
- Multiple choice quizzes
ClassIn reports
After the lesson, ClassIn automatically generates a feedback report (in a choice of languages) including key statistics from the lesson (student attendance, rewards, scores in quizzes, screenshots of key “highlights”, etc).
You can write teacher comments on the report by navigating to the “course” tab in your class group, clicking on the report button and then giving a score (up to five stars) and writing a comment in the “teacher evaluation” section.
Setting homework tasks/ tests
ClassIn allows you to specifically set homework tasks or tests within the class group chat after class. Within the task tab, you can track which students have submitted homework (useful in large group classes) and mark their work.
The test section of ClassIn allows you to create your own quizzes, including self-marking multiple choice quizzes or writing questions.
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