The Hot Spot tool is commonly used for setting clickable, or “hot,” locations on an image, e.g. “Click on a map to select a state”, “Which of these are predators…”, “Identify the tibia …” Some Teachers also use it to have their students cite supporting evidence in reading passages!

To use the Hot spot icon, select 'Insert' on the toolbar or click in your activity to make the Tools menu appear.  Click, or Click and Drag 

Select 'Hot Spot' and draw boxes around all the answer and distractor areas that you want activated.

First, you’ll want to draw boxes on all the possible answer choices. Do so by clicking and dragging your cursor to make a box. (It will display with a question mark inside of it for you, not for your students.) 

Draw boxes on all the areas where you want the student to click—the correct and incorrect/distractor answer areas.

Once you’ve placed all of your boxes, join them together into a group. To join Hot Spots together into a group, hold down the Shift key and click on each of the boxes. As you do so, the boxes will turn blue to signify they’re now part of a scorable answer group.

Once you’ve grouped your Hot Spots and they’ve all turned blue, highlight one of the CORRECT ANSWERS and select the 'Edit' button just below the tool bar. 

The ‘Edit Hot Spot’ pop-up window will appear:

Click on the option to indicate that the student should click this hot spot. The number of points assigned applies to the entire group.

Repeat this process for every box in the hot spot group. One or more members of the group can be set to “the student should click this hot spot,” meaning this is a correct answer. If the hot spot box is incorrect, or shouldn’t be clicked on, the Edit Hot Spot pop-uselect the option for the student to leave it unclicked.

PRO TIP: You’ll want to use Preview on the VIEW menu to see what your hot spots look like to your students. Be sure to make your boxes big enough so students have large areas on which to click.

Hot Spot Tool Explainer Video

Here’s a quick video explaining how to use this feature: