College instructors, especially those teaching
large lecture courses, often wonder how
they can know whether their students
are following them during class.
Others are troubled by the fact that sometimes a
few students monopolize class discussion time
leaving the rest of the students mostly unheard.
Others wonder how they could get truly honest
answers from students on controversial topics.
My name is Nancy Grayum, classroom services
manager at Western Washington University.
In this short movie, I will describe how
classroom response systems can be used
to answers these questions and
I will also describe some strategies for
using clickers and getting started.
An instructional technology that got its start
with hard-wired systems in the 1980’s,
classroom response systems, using clickers,
have come a long way in terms of reliability,
integration with other classroom technologies
and ease of use.
Some colleges require students to purchase
the clickers while others provide the clickers
to courses on a reservation basis.
The classroom used must have the system installed,
both the software and the receiving device.
Once the elements are there,
instructors must then develop effective
questions to use in their class sessions.
The best questions address a specific purpose
in the class, such as directing attention
or raising awareness on certain topics.
Most systems support many types of questions:
The questions can appear directly on a
PowerPoint screen, which interacts with
the installed software and receiving device.
But questions also can be asked from
within the system software, or orally.
Students may need to enter information into
the clicker device in order to join or log in
to the session, either anonymously or by using
a student ID, which ever the instructor prefers.
In general, 3 main steps for using a classroom
response system in class are:
An instruction presents a question or problem
often projected on a screen in front the class.
Students have a specific amount of time to input
their answers using their clicker device, which
will display a confirmation their input was received.
And instructor and the students instantly view
a display charting the distribution of responses.
The instructor will usually have a series
of questions prepared either clustered together
or peppered throughout the presentation.
Anonymous student responses can
immediately be projected for everyone to
see and discuss, reviewed to inform the
instructional process on the fly or
simply gathered for future use.
Responses tied to individual students,
or clicker IDs, can also be displayed and
additionally can be automatically saved as
a data file for later reporting.
There are many instructional strategies for
using clickers, the questions or statements can
serve to launch a discussion, or checkpoints
for understanding, or as graded evaluations.
One of the major uses for classrooms
response systems is to foster discussion.
Examples include: posing a relevant question
and sharing aggregated results to warm up
for a whole class discussion.
Or using opinion polling or surveys to analyze
the differences and similarities of choices
and consider alternative viewpoints.
Getting an individual response to a
controversial question, having students discuss
or debate with their peers and then repeating
the question for a before and after comparison.
Some instructors have made teaching more dynamic by:
having students work in groups to discuss and vote
on the best answer to a problem or dilemma,
given some possible, yet incomplete solutions;
using questions and student feedback to drive
every step of the instruction throughout a lecture;
or allowing students to predict the outcome of a
demonstration done in class.
Above all, by using clickers effectively,
instructors can promote students' participation
independent of their temperament.
Students who are reluctant to speak out
in class now have the opportunity to
express opinions and provide feedback.
To get started, check with the classroom
technology office at your institution,
find out what system is available to you
and how your colleagues have used similar
classroom response systems.
Explore the many resources available online.
In the words of professor Ian Beaty, at the
University of Massachusetts: