The raise hand feature allows participants to signal that they have a question or would like to speak during a session without interrupting the lesson.
Everyone in a Space can raise their hand, including both hosts and participants. Hosts can see when participants have raised their hands, invite muted participants to speak, and manage multiple raised hands using the queue.
How to raise your hand
If youâre in a live video call, you can raise your hand with the Raise Hand button in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
You can also find the Raise Hand option in the three-dot menu during a call.
Once your hand is raised, you can lower it again by reselecting the Raise Hand button.
Note: The raise hand feature will only appear if youâre in an active call. For more information on calling in Pencil Spaces, see our guide: How to start or join a call?
How to manage raised hands
When multiple participants have their hands raised, you can open the full Queue to see everyone who is waiting and work through their questions in order.
To open the queue:
Click Manage People in the top-right corner of the screen.
Select Queue, the second panel in the Manage section.
View the participants with their hands raised. They appear in chronological order, with the person who raised their hand first at the top of the queue.
If a participant lowers their hand and raises it again, they will move to the bottom of the queue based on their new raise time.
Once everyone has lowered their hand, the Queue panel will automatically disappear.
How to ask a participant to speak
If a participant has raised their hand and their microphone is muted, you can use the Ask to Speak function that appears in the raised hand notification.
Once you select Ask to Speak, the participant will be prompted to unmute their microphone. They can select the unmute option directly from the notification, which will unmute their microphone so they can speak.
Note: If the participant is already unmuted, Ask to Speak will not appear. You can simply ask them to speak when youâre ready. You can also only use the Ask to Speak function if a participantâs hand is raised.
How to lower a participantâs hand
Participants can lower their own hands by reselecting the raise hand button. If necessary, hosts can also lower participantsâ hands.
To lower an individual participantsâ hand:
Open Manage People in the top-right corner of the screen, and open the Queue panel.
Find the participant whose hand you want to lower, and select Lower.
The participantâs raised hand notification will disappear, and the raised hand indicator will be removed from their video tile.
Lower all raised hands
If you want to clear a queue of multiple participantsâ raised hands, select Lower all button from the Queue.
This will immediately lower every hand currently raised inside the Space. This is particularly useful after youâve worked through a group of questions and want to start a new round of questions or discussion.
Need more help?
If you need more help with the raised hand feature, please contact the Pencil Spaces Support team. Weâre available 24/7 and will be happy to help.
For more details on how to access our live support team, see our guide: How to access 24/7 live support.