Clickers in the Classroom

TechTrends • January/February 2009 Volume 53, Number 1 s there an alternative to traditional lectures? The Clinical Laboratory Science (CLS) department at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is investigating the use of audience response systems (ARS) in its lecture style classes. ARS, or clickers, as they are more commonly called, are wireless hand held devices about the size of a small calculator (see Figure 1). Students may use clickers in class to: answer questions in the form of quizzes or self assessment, perform instructor or course evaluations, and/or record attendance. Clickers have been shown to improve attendance and increase participation. Research on student grade improvement is ambiguous. The best application of clickers appears to be the immediate feedback assessment provided to the instructor and the students. Often the content of lectures in CLS classes overlaps among the disciplines. The instructor knows that a concept has been covered in another class, but does not know if the students remember the concepts well enough to skip over it. An ARS is a good way to assess students’ existing knowledge or to activate prior knowledge to “make it available in working memory for learning” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2007, p. 315). In order to learn new material the new content needs to be integrated with existing knowledge (Reiser & Dempsey). It is sometimes difficult to know who understands the content of a lecture. With the use of audience response systems, or clickers, the instructor knows immediately whether the students understand the concept being discussed (Ribbens, 2007). Immediate feedback gives the instructor an opportunity to review the topic or save time and move on to the next topic. The teacher has to be flexible enough to redirect a lecture to meet the changing needs of the class. Stuart, Brown, and Draper (2004) refer to this as “contingent teaching.” Students also know immediately how their level of understanding compares to their classmates. Sometimes students think no one else in the class understands so it must be the professor’s fault. When they see that 80% of the class answered the question correctly but they did not, it is motivation to study more. The class does not know who answered a question incorrectly. Clickers can be used for formative evaluation that occurs throughout the course, providing information to students and the instructor about where further learning or teaching needs to occur (Oerman & Gaberson, 2006). ARS can be used for quick in-class quizzes. In-class quizzes can be used as self-assessment for the students, Clickers in the Classroom