No. Students can join as guests, with just a name, when the session allows it. To turn it on, open the session, choose the three dots menu, then Edit session details, and switch on Allow guest students. You can do this before the lesson or while the session is running.
New sessions start with guests off, unless your school has chosen to start them on. A school can also switch guest joining off for everyone, or limit joining to school email addresses; the switch is then greyed out and students need to sign in.
The trade-off is what you can see over time. When students sign in, Signal builds a picture of each student across your sessions: who keeps struggling with the same idea, and who has improved since the start of the unit. Guests have no account, so they can’t be reliably followed from one lesson to the next. A guest who rejoins on the same device and browser may show as the same person, but on another device they appear as someone new.
Guests are a good way to try Signal with a class. Once a class uses it regularly, sign-in gives you much more.
Signal features
Step-by-step tutorials
More in Getting started and joining
- How do students join a Signal session?
- Why are students asked to sign in after scanning the QR code?
- How do students sign in to Nurture Signal?
- Does Nurture Signal work with Microsoft Teams?
- Can students use iPads, Chromebooks or phones?
- What if not every student has a device?
- Can students make the text bigger?
- Is Nurture Signal available in other languages?
- Can a colleague run a session with me?