Clickers and Student Voices

Campus Technology recently published an interview with Edna Ross, who teaches 350-student psychology courses at the University of Louisville.  I interviewed Ross for my book, and I found her to be sensitive to important social dynamics in the classroom and the ways that she can use clickers to influence those dynamics.

In the Campus Technology interview, she describes some of the ways she uses clickers in her big classes–to facilitate reading quizzes that motivate students to read their textbook before class, to check and see how well her students are following her lectures (since asking “Do you have any questions?” isn’t that productive in a class with 350 students!), and to help her students engage with course material and express their perspectives.

With clickers, you’re giving every student a voice, even the introverts, even the shy ones, and the ones who don’t agree with the dominant social position. I’m giving them a voice, and it’s heard instantly.

Check out her interview for more on her experiences using clickers.  What ideas do you have for using clickers to help give each student a voice in your classes?

–Derek Bruff

First Ever Clickers Conference

I recently attended the Inaugural Conference on Classroom Response Systems, hosted by the Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Louisville.  I had a great time meeting people who I knew only by their research, and some of the sessions were very well done.

Tim Stelzer, research associate professor of physics at the University of Illinois and one of the founders of i>clicker, presented the morning keynote address.  His presentation was very engaging, featuring a nice blend of information and humor.

One point Stelzer made that stood out to me was that in the past, being highly educated was correlated strongly with remembering lots of facts.  This is still true today to some extent.  Consider Ken Jennings, the guy who won all those Jeopardy gameshows.  He’s considered highly intelligent, but not for higher-order thinking skills (problem solving, critical thinking, etc.), just for remembering lots of trivia.

Stelzer made the point that with all the information available to students via the Internet, factual recall doesn’t play the same role it used to play in learning.  The challenge now in higher education is to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills, and Stelzer feels that classroom response systems can facilitate pedagogies that help teachers meet that challenge.

Writing clicker questions that target higher-order thinking skills isn’t easy, but it’s important given the goals instructors usually have for student learning.  We’ll talk about this at our gradSTEP workshop on clickers.  Have you seen multiple-choice questions (asked via clickers or traditional exams) that effectively target higher-order thinking skills?

(For additional thoughts on Tim Stelzer’s presentation, as well as other aspects of the clickers conference, visit my blog on teaching with classroom response systems.)

–Derek Bruff

Teaching with Clickers: Engaging Students with Classroom Response Systems

Facilitator: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director, CFT

Session 1, 1:00-2:15

Register for this session here!

Classroom response systems (“clickers”) are technologies that enable teachers to rapidly collect and analyze student responses to multiple-choice (and sometimes free-response) questions during class.  These systems can be used to effectively engage and assess students, particularly in large classes.  This workshop explores questions and activities that make the most of these systems, as well as solutions to common challenges involved in teaching with clickers, including writing effective clicker questions, structuring class time using clickers, and responding to results of clicker questions.

I’m Derek Bruff, an assistant director at the CFT, and I’ll be leading the clickers workshop at gradSTEP 2009.  My book, Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments, is coming out in February and features examples of clicker questions and activities drawn from interviews with almost 50 faculty members from a variety of disciplines.  I’ll share some of these examples in the gradSTEP workshop.

Here are a couple of resources to get you started thinking about teaching with clickers:

• I’ve written a teaching guide about clickers for the CFT Web site.
• I also maintain a bibliography of research on clickers, also on the CFT Web site.  It’s organized by discipline, so you can use it to find examples of clicker use in your field.

What questions do you have about teaching with clickers?  What examples of effective use of clickers have you seen or read about?  What potential do you see in using clickers in your teaching?  Leave your thoughts about these questions in the comments below…