Student Shadow or collaborative sessions allow teachers and admins to connect to a student's lab to provide one-on-one assistance through screen sharing and, optionally, mouse and keyboard control.

Teachers and admins can initiate a shadow session for any active user session in a Class that they have access to.

In this article, we'll review:

Teachers can start a shadow session from the CloudApps Classroom Admin Portal.

1. Sign in to the CloudApps Classroom Admin Portal.

2. Click the Classes tab in the left sidebar → select the desired Class.

3. Find the student you wish to shadow and click the Shadow Session button in the Actions column.

4. In a few moments, you'll be connected to the session in view-only mode. The student will see a brief notification that someone has connected to their session.

5. From the side panel, a user can Give Control or Request Control; if they are requesting control, the current user with control will be prompted to grant or deny control.

6. When you are finished, use the side panel to Exit the session and return to the Admin Portal.

✅ If the user that currently has control gets momentarily disconnected and reconnects quickly (within about three seconds), they will resume control of the session. Otherwise, control is automatically given to the other user, regardless of whether it is the primary or secondary user.

✅ Collaborative sessions currently only support two users.

✅ Because the session is being mirrored, the Collaborative Session may appear very large or very small for the secondary users if their local screen resolution is different than the primary user’s.

For example, if a user's session is in fullscreen mode on a 4K monitor and an admin initiates a Collaborative Session from a 720p device, the session may appear extremely small because the remote resolution is matched to the primary user.