Clickers in the Laboratory: Student Thoughts and Views

Introduction This paper presents the perceptions of Irish Nursing students with regard to the use of technology in the clinical skills laboratories. Many instructors at both large and small educational institutions have begun to use classroom technology that allows students to respond and interact via small, hand-held, remote keypads called "Clickers". It resembles the "Ask the Audience" portion of the game show "Who Wants to be A Millionaire" and enables instructors to instantaneously collect student responses to a posted question, generally multiple choice. The answers are immediately tallied and displayed on a classroom projection screen where both students and instructor can see and discuss them. This technology is known under many names and will be referred to as an audience response system (AR system or ARS). Audience Response Systems are an evolving in-class student-polling technology designed to create an engaging and inviting learning environment that maximizes active learning. Unfortunately, there appears to be no standardization of terminology in the literature; audience response systems are variously described by vendors and academic users as: audience-paced feedback systems (APF), student response systems (SRS), classroom performance systems (CPS), electronic response systems (ERS), hyper-active teaching technology (H-ITT), interactive engagement (IE), interactive audience response systems (IRIS), interactive learning systems (ILS), interactive student-response systems (ISRS), personal response systems (PRS), group response systems (GRS), and wireless response systems (WRS). For the purpose of this research, the ARS acronym will be used to refer to this technology. This is a relatively new technology that offers easy deployment of active learning and engagement within any learning environment. One of the aims of the research was to evaluate students' experiences of the use of technology in supporting their learning styles. Another objective was to determine if the students better retained the knowledge of the module with the user of the ARS or Clicker technology. This was achieved via an online quiz in Moodle in the penultimate week of the semester. Many methods are used to enhance student engagement in instructional nursing education courses (Moredich & Moore, 2007; Richardson & Trudeau, 2003) and systems are introduced as new technologies become available (Fink, 2005; Fitch, 2004; Roberts, 2005; Skiba & Barton, 2006; Weimer, 2002). The operation of an ARS is a simple three-step process: 1) During the teaching period, the instructor displays or verbalizes a question or problem, previously prepared or spontaneously generated "on the fly" by the instructor or a student, 2) All students key in their answers using wireless handheld keypads--aka "Clickers", 3) Responses are received, aggregated, and displayed on both the instructor's computer monitor and an overhead projector screen. The distribution of student responses may prompt the students or instructor to further explore the key area with discussion or, perhaps, one or more follow-up questions. This interactive cycle can continue until both the instructor and the students have resolved ambiguities or reached closure on the topic at hand (Lowery, 2006). Background The B.Sc Nursing (General, Mental Health, and Intellectual Disability) is a full-time four year programme offered by the Department of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Education and Health Sciences, University of Limerick in conjunction with the Health Services Executive Mid-West (Limerick, Clare, and North Tipperary). Upon successful completion of the programme students will register with An Board Altranais (ABA) and practice as a Registered Nurse (R.G.N), Registered Psychiatric Nurse (R.P.N.) or Registered Nurse Intellectual Disability (R.N.I.D). The curriculum encompasses the development of theory and practice simultaneously and includes lectures, clinical skills laboratory work, tutorials, and clinical placement. …