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Clickers and their use in our classes
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There are varieties of clickers which have been used commercially for a long time. The use of clickers started almost 30 years ago when they were first used by IBM for corporate training of its employees. Clickers have also been used in the famous television quiz show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” in which the contestants used audience answers to questions posed by the game show host. Since then clickers have evolved, from hard-wired clickers to infrared (IR) to the modern day radio-frequency (RF) controlled clickers.
Clickers have trickled into academia and higher education classrooms in the last decade or so, and have been used in physics departments of many universities.
Each student who has a clicker has a unique code which allows the instructor to identify the source of the response. If student anonymity is desired, this feature can also be turned off.
These clickers are being used in a couple classes here at Boise State University. The Physics Department has used them since Fall 2006. Economics Professor Jeff Black has also started using these clickers this semester along with Marketing Professor Doug Lincoln.
Lincoln, Editor of “The Journal of Marketing Education,” is teaching the junior-level class MKTG 301, Principles of Marketing, this semester and decided to use clickers in
his class because of an increase in the number of students.
“I really wanted to give the students a good education, even if there were 90 of them instead of 40,” Lincoln said.
He is teaching this class along with two other instructors, since the class has three sections.He encouraged his colleagues to adopt the use of clickers in their sections as well, but they joked about conducting an experiment with their classes.
“We thought it would be funny for one section to use it and not the other two sections,” Lincoln said.
Although there are four major brands of clickers available, Lincoln decided to go with the CPS (Classroom Performance System) brand.
This is because the book that they use for the class is partnered with CPS and he didn’t want to change books.
CPS is made, marketed and supported by eInstructions and is the market leader in the industry.
“They had good support, good training, and were well known. Also I had done research and found that Ohio State University adopted the CPS brand for use throughout its entire campus. So I figured they couldn’t be too wrong about it,” Lincoln said.
Using the clickers, students can respond to questions posed by Lincoln. The signals from each clicker are received by a portable receiver attached to the computer in the classroom where the class is taught. Because of the use of clickers, the results are instantaneously available, compared to the traditional use of paper and pencil, which takes a great deal of time to read.
One of things that Lincoln likes to do is give weekly quizzes instead long exams covering seven to eight chapters at a time.
The student will be using their clickers for these quizzes. The advantage in doing this is that the quizzes can be completed faster, the students’ responses recorded instantly and immediate feedback is available.
“One thing I plan to do is pose a question on their level of understanding of a particular topic. People don’t like to show that they’re dumb and embarrass themselves. One of the things I could do is put in anonymous mode and students can
respond and I cannot track their response to a particular name. One of the beauties is that you can get responses, get opinions and feelings from people who might not otherwise give them to you,” Lincoln said.
As far as learning how to use the clicker and the software that came along with it, Lincoln said that there is a very steep learning curve. He started to do the online training in October 2006 and has since read the 200-page manual that came along with the clicker.
“I spent six hours preparing for today’s class, which normally would have been one hour,” Lincoln said. “It adds 10-12 hours
per week for class preparation and it’s a cost I look forward to making because I think it will benefit the students in the
future.”
The greatest value of using the clicker in the classroom is what is called “peer instruction.” Lincoln poses an opinion question and all the responses are recorded. Then he asks the students to break into groups and discuss why they chose a particular answer. In this way the students can learn from one another.
One of the things with clickers that has been widely acknowledged is that the instructor cannot cover as much content.
According to Lincoln, this is not such a bad thing .
It forces the instructor to think more clearly about what they want to have happen in class, as well as what they want the students to take away from the semester.
Harsh Mantri
