The Active Class

“The idea of wasting money on a device no more sophisticated pedagogically than raising your hand drives me nuts.”

So sayeth David Socol, who studies technology in special education at Michigan State University, in reference to clickers  (Quoted here: http://chronicle.com/article/Classroom-Clickersthe/6009).

I work in the physics department at the University of Colorado – we were early adopters of clickers, so we’ve fielded arguments like this quite a bit.  Just what does the clicker buy you over a simple hand-raise?

It depends.  If you’re using it to take attendance – not much.  If you’re using it for quizzes, then it’s just easier for you, come grading time.

But the best use of clickers isn’t for attendance or quizzes – it’s to deeply engage your students in the subject.  Can you do this in other ways?  Sure!  But with clickers, you get a lot of bang for your buck – more so, perhaps, than the pricey textbooks students lug from class to class, only to throw out next semester. As my colleague Mike Dubson told me, “I can think of no other device that accomplishes so many benefits in a single package.”

At the University of Colorado, we use clickers to get students to think about, discuss, and respond to difficult conceptual questions.  We do this with a process called “peer instruction,” developed in part by Eric Mazur at Harvard.  Here’s an outline:

1. Instructor poses a challenging, multiple-choice conceptual question
2. (Optional:  Instructors may ask students to vote silently on their own)
3. Students turn to their neighbors to discuss the question and explain what they think the answer is
4. Students vote
5. Instructor discusses the question with the class
6. Instructor shows students the histogram of how they responded

There are as many ways to run peer instruction as there are teachers, but the most important aspect is step #3 – discussing the question with a neighbor.  As teachers we know that we first learned a subject well when we taught it.  Similarly, students learn by explaining their thoughts to someone else.  And a student who is struggling has the benefit of interacting with another person, at their level, in the middle of lecture.

The brain processes information differently (and more deeply) when it is engaged in this manner rather than passively listening to a lecture.   In Eric Mazur’s study, he found that more students got the right answer after peer discussion than when they voted individually before discussion.   But, were they really learning?  Or were the “smart” students giving away the answer?

My colleagues at CU designed a study to answer this question.   Students were asked a question, which they answered on their own.  Like Mazur’s study, they found that more students answered that question correctly after discussion.  But they then asked students a similar question, which they voted on silently.  More students answered that new question correctly on their own than they did the first one, showing that they had learned something from the discussions.

So, peer discussion works (not a surprise, given what we know about the effectiveness of active engagement strategies).  But why do we need clickers to do this?

Well, there are some special things that this simple piece of plastic technology does for us, namely:

• Anonymity. This is a biggie.  If students are raising their hands, they look to see how their neighbors are voting.  The clicker makes sure that every student can answer with their real answer, without fear of looking stupid.
• Focusing on a question. The posing of a clicker question, and its subsequent discussion and vote, focuses the class in a way that is heavily facilitated by the use of the clicker.
• Committing to an answer.  There is something about clicking that button that is important in solidifying a student’s choice.  They must make an actual decision to press A or B or C, rather than hedging their bets: a hand half-raised for a few different choices.  They have to vote, and they know what they voted.
• Instant feedback. The projected histogram gives instant feedback to the instructor about what his or her students are (or aren’t) understanding, and lets the students know how they compare to other students in their class.  This kind of feedback is critically important in learning.  Usually students only have a chance to test themselves, and see how they compare to their peers, three times a semester – on exams.  This gives them a chance to do so many times each week, thus prompting them to seek help if they need it.

All this benefit, for a gadget that costs about $30 and can be used during the lifetime of a student’s stay at university.

This is why Mike Dubson says clickers pack such a pedagogical punch for a small price.

So, sure, you can have an interactive classroom without clickers, pose questions to students, and use peer instruction.  But clickers provide real benefits, and help faculty generate innovations in their teaching.  It’s not a panacea, of course – the effectiveness of clickers depends on how they’re used.  But that’s the topic of future posts!

More resources

Videos and relevant research linked here: http://STEMclickers.colorado.edu

The Costs (and Benefits) of Clickers (a detailed dialogue in response to  Classroom Clickers and the Cost of Technology) – Derek Bruff’s blog and myself.

For more tips on effective use of clickers, check out these other resources (written by faculty, for faculty) at http://iclicker.com/dnn/UserCommunity/BestPracticesTips/tabid/169/Default.aspx