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Common challenges in using clickers (#aaptsm10)
Another post from AAPT: Ian Beatty gave a very nice presentation on common challenges in using classroom response systems, based on the last five years of his work with middle school and high school teachers, helping them to start to use this tool in their class. Here is more information about that project (called TEFA) — check it out for publications and reports on the project. Ian also has some wonderful short 3-4 page newsletters he’s created for the teachers in the project – here is my bid for him to post those online somewhere, they’re very useful.
Anyway. Here are the main struggles he’s seen teachers encounter when they start to use clickers:
1. Insufficient time to prepare questions.
When you unpack that, teachers are really saying that inventing good questions is hard, and that they’re busy. He saw that teachers who don’t stress as much about creating questions are those who don’t see the question itself as the be-all-end-all of learning, but rather as a springboard for discussion. They’re happy to take a question from the textbook, and use it to generate discussion, rather than to work hard to create the “perfect” question. This is interesting to me, since at CU-Boulder we’re always trying to get people to ask higher-order questions. Perhaps this causes unnecessary stress for a beginning user?
2. Insufficient class time.
Again, unpacking this, what a teacher is really saying is “I have a lot of material to cover” and “discussion takes time.” A teacher who stresses about this aspect is likely to be seeing class as the place where content gets covered, as opposed to a time to digest that content.
3. Poor participation.
Are students bored, or are they afraid to speak? If they’re bored, is content being covered too slowly? If they’re afraid to speak, is it because they feel that they’re being assessed? If they’re trying to figure out what the instructor wants to hear (an “answermaking” mode) they’re going to be more reluctant to speak than if they’re focused on exploring their thinking (“sensemaking” mode). According to Ian, students should not be given any credit for the right answer to a clicker question unless the question will be on a test. To give an example of how a clicker question can be an exploration tool rather than an assessment tool, he shared one of his favorite question:
If you were a superhero, would you rather be able to change:
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The mass of things
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The charge of things
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The magnetization of things
This question created some great discussion — and of course, there’s no right answer!
Teachers also faced challenges in the following areas:
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Clash with teaching style
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Incompatible with subject
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Technical difficulties
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Behavior problems
He didn’t get a chance to talk about those, but he has a great Prezi presentation that you can look at directly here, and I’ve embedded below.
ADDENDUM: You can see a thoughtful post about Ian Beatty’s talk over on Derek Bruff’s blog. I think the three of us are becoming a clicker-clique.
Comments: (5)
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Categories: Classroom Response Systems, K12
Read All Stephanie Chasteen
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July 22nd, 2010 at 7:26 am
About the good questions to start with. I rarely write my own clicker questions – I just steal stuff. I agree that you can use them as a starting point for a discussion – even with terrible questions. However, it is very nice to have some really thought provoking questions.
So, I hope you and yours at CU-Boulder continue to encourage people to make higher-order questions (so I can use them).
July 26th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I talked to Ian a bit after his presentation, about his observation that teachers who don’t see the question itself as the be-all-end-all have an easier time implementing peer instruction. I wondered if that meant that he advocated for not worrying about the questions in general, and focusing more on the process than on the beginning question. He said that he’s not able to make clear recommendations at this point — he’s just describing what he’s seen.
For myself, the kind of buzz that I’ve seen in the room about a really good question suggests to me that that is an integral part of the process. A boring question is boring, and motivation is key to learning as we know.
You do know about our question banks posted at http://STEMclickers.colorado.edu?
July 26th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
I’ll often contrast a multiple-choice clicker question with a multiple-choice exam question. It’s important that a multiple-choice exam question be very clearly written and possess exactly one correct answer. Typos, ambiguities, answer choices that are correct but weren’t intended by the instructor to be correct–these all cause headaches during and after exams.
In contrast, if you’re reasonably quick on your feet, a clicker question can have any of these things (typos, ambiguities, etc.) and still work very well. Sometimes, a clicker question with a “bug” can actually generate more productive class discussion than a “perfect” clicker question. Check out Mitch Keller’s blog for an example of this.
I think your point is valid, Stephanie, that a question needs to be interesting to really generate good conversation. But good questions need not be “perfect” questions and sometimes it’s the “errors” in a question that make it interesting!
July 26th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Yes, and that’s a good point, Derek. I’ve seen this same phenomenon in Steve Pollock’s class — the questions with a “bug” can generate great discussion, and students take a lot of pride in convincing Steve that one of the answers he considered “wrong” is actually right, for some reason he hadn’t taken into account. Good stuff.
August 10th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
The first semester I taught with clickers I obsessed over choice of questions until I realized that I could use questions lifted verbatim from my old tests. Those are questions on topics I value and are worded carefully. I use additional questions to enhance engagement and interaction. These often have no correct answer. I tell the students that full credit will be given for each answer. I am interested to see what the students think and believe, and many of them care about what their peers think and believe. Another thing I do both on tests and in lectures to keep students awake is include an answer choice (always the last choice) intended to be a joke. Some students appreciate this; I do it to keep myself entertained. At the suggestion of a colleague, I award 8 to 10% of the grade to students’ answers. Half of the points are earned by answering the questions, whether or not the answers are correct. The other half of the points are earned by answering the questions correctly when compared with the class average. Those who do better than average earn extra credit. Those who do worse than average lose some points.