Acadly

Acadly is a classroom interactivity tool that uses Zoom and adds features for in-class student response, math-TeX support, and no limits on the number of responses. Acadly Enterprise brings an improved experience to classes for both students and faculty, by making it possible to use quizzes, polls, discussions, word cloud questions, videos, files, and more, in one application.

Any UIC instructor can sign up with a UIC email address, a trial account will be activated for them and they will be placed in Acadly verification queue. Because the basic license is free, a verification is done to confirm that the person signing up is an instructor at a higher education institution. At any time, even before verification, if someone uses the Blackboard plugin to import a course to Acadly, all Acadly features will be unlocked immediately.

Automated Attendance with Acadly!

AVAILABLE TO: Faculty | Students | Staff

FUNDED BY: University

Included in Acadly’s Enterprise License

  1. Students in the course appear automatically in Acadly
  2. Students can attend Zoom synchronous classes within Acadly
  3. Students can chat, answer polls or take quizzes during Zoom sessions and have those activities available even after the class is over
  4. Students can automatically see their grades for class activities and attendance in Blackboard

What can Acadly help instructors with?

  • Automatic Attendance that saves you time
  • Realtime Polls to increase and record student engagement
  • Quizzes to better understand students’ grasp on a topic
  • Contextual Messaging tuned to the classroom
  • Continue the engagement outside the classroom
  • Analytics to get a detailed view of students’ performance

See the full list of Acadly features at acadly.com/features

Accessibility

Acadly offers accessibility features that allows users to easily navigate and read the Acadly web interface. The web interface supports screen readers for all available creator and viewer interfaces. The web interface also support keyboard access, allowing you to use the tab key to access all available functions. All sessions fully support adding and displaying captions.

For additional information on Acadly’s accessibility features, please visit Acadly’s Accessibility Conformance Report (WCAG Edition).

Types of courses in Acadly

  • Acadly with Blackboard and Zoom integration (Acadly Enterprise course): Any course created using the Blackboard plugin will have both integrations enabled by default. If you wish to use the Blackboard integration but not the Zoom integration, simply unselect the “this is an online lecture on Acadly” option at the time of lecture/ course schedule creation.
  • Acadly with Zoom integration, but without Blackboard integration (Acadly Pro course): This is useful for cases where, for example, the LMS course doesn’t reflect the actual enrollment, or when an instructor simply does not want to use Blackboard at all. To create a course with just the Zoom integration, log in to Acadly, tap the + button and select Create a Pro course. You will be shown information about how to create an Acadly Enterprise course before proceeding with the setup. This prompt is to make sure that professors understand that if they need the Blackboard integration, they should not proceed further and create the course from within Blackboard instead.
  • Acadly without Blackboard and Zoom integration (Acadly Basic course): To create a course without any integrations, log in to Acadly, tap the + button, and select Create a basic course. However, there is no real advantage of using an Acadly Basic course because:
    1. In an Acadly Pro course, using the Zoom integration is optional. It can be turned off at the lecture level, as explained in point.
    2. In Pro courses, apart from the Zoom integration, another benefit is that any exported reports contain students’ email addresses, which can help manually sync data with the Blackboard Grade Center. So it is recommended to create a Pro course, even if one does not use the Zoom integration.

Set Up Your Acadly in Blackboard

Login into Blackboard and go into your Original View course or Ultra View course.

Please note that Chrome is the recommended browser for using Acadly.

Original View Course

Go into the Original View course that you want to use Acadly in

  1. On the navigation panel, scroll down to Course Tools under Course Management; open course tools and select Acadly Course.
  2. Once you click on the Acadly link, you will be prompted to import data by clicking on the Yes, Import My Data button.
  3. You will receive notification if your email is not linked to an Acadly account and you will be prompted to create an account by clicking on the Create A New Acadly Account button.
    1. You will be emailed a verification code to enter into the next screen and click the Verify button.
    2. You will then be prompted to set a password, check that you agree with the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, and click Continue.
  4. Or if you have already created an Acadly account, you will be prompted to sign in using your password.
  5. Next, you will need to view and set the course team, start and end date, duration, time zone, and then click Add a new weekly class button; this opens a pop-up window to add a weekly class schedule, when complete select the Done button.
  6. Select Save & Continue to see the course timeline, you can delete or add more classes as needed.
  7. Select Save & Continue again, this will bring you to the Import Student Data step, you will need to select Save & Continue and then Create Course button to confirm.

You can add a tool link in your Original View course for students to access by going to the navigation panel on the left side of your course by selecting the plus with a circle around it and selecting the tool link.

Ultra View Course

Go into the Ultra View course that you want to use Acadly in

  1. You can add a tool link in your Ultra View course by going to the Books & Tools (under the Details & Actions panel on the left side of your course) and selecting the tool link.
  2. Once you click on the Acadly link, you will be prompted to import data by clicking on the Yes, Import My Data button.
  3. You will receive notification if your email is not linked to an Acadly account and you will be prompted to create an account by clicking on the Create A New Acadly Account button.
    1. You will be emailed a verification code to enter into the next screen and click the Verify button.
    2. You will then be prompted to set a password, check that you agree with the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, and click Continue.
  4. Or if you have already created an Acadly account, you will be prompted to sign in using your password.
  5. Next, you will need to view and set the course team, start and end date, duration, and time zone.
  6. Click Add a new weekly class button; this opens a pop-up window to add a weekly class schedule, when complete select the Done button.
  7. Select Save & Continue to see the course timeline, you can delete or add more classes as needed.
  8. Select Save & Continue again, this will bring you to the Import Student Data step, you will need to select Save & Continue to import students, and then click the Create Course button to confirm.

Please note that student enrollments are automatically added to Acadly through the set up process.

Consult the tutorials on this page or register for training before starting to use Acadly in your classroom.

Getting Started with Acadly in Blackboard (videos) 

 

Acadly’s Tutorials (How-To Guides)

 

Attendance

 

Course Activities

Creating Courses

 

Course Scheduling

 

Account Settings

 

Product Demonstrations (videos) 

 

Using Acadly with Zoom (videos)

Automatic Attendance

Beyond Automatic Attendance