Introduction to Using Clickers in Higher Education

Clickers (also known as Audience Response Systems, Classroom Communication Systems, and Personal Response Systems, among other things), are systems that support audience participation in lectures.

Some use these tools are used in large group sessions as part of efforts to -:

• Allow anonymous interaction
• These systems can be used to encourage anonymous answering of questions where the teacher feels that would be beneficial to encouraging participation, or for ethical reasons.
• Increase engagement
• Some teachers believe that asking the students questions at the start, or part way through a lecture can help keep the students focused.
• Start discussions
• Perhaps the most talked about use of Clickers is as part of the Peer Instruction method. In this method students would be asked to answer a question which is designed so that only students with a grasp of certain concepts will be able to answer it correctly. Students see the range of answers on a big screen and are asked to defend their answer to the people sitting next to them. They then vote again, and there should be a move towards the correct answer. The lecturer can then take over if they feel that is necessary.
• This seems to work best in subjects where a key to learning is helping students understand none-intuitive concepts. Examples are Physics (see the work of Eric Mayer, and watch a video of a presentation by him) or Mechanical Engineering (see the work at the Univerisity of Strathclyde).
• Aid Contingent Teaching and diagnosis of common misunderstandings
• A lecturer with well written questions can identify where lots of the class are misunderstanding a concept.
• Record answers
• If anonymity is not required, it is possible to record answers for individual student’s summative assessment.

If you want to look a bit more closely at some of these methods, especially Peer Instruction, the following journal articles might be of interest. 

• 'Examining the benefits and challenges of using audience response systems: A review of the literature' by Kay and LeSage (Computers and Education, 2009) is a major review of the literature in this area and is a must read article. It looks at the history of the technology and terms used to describe it, followed by an in-depth review of 67 peer-reviewed papers published from 2000 to 2007.
• ‘Characterizing the Effect of Seating Arrangement on Classroom Learning Using Neural Networks’ by  Monterola, Roxas and Carreon-Monterola (Complexity, 14.4, 2009) found that when using a type of Peer Instruction there were benefits to seating high aptitude students at the corners of the classroom rather than in any other planned or random seating arrangement.
• ‘A New Peer Instruction Method for Teaching Practical Skills in the Health Sciences: an Evaluation of the ‘Learning Trail’’ by Dollman (Advances in Health Sciences Education, 2005) looks at “an innovative application of peer-mediated instruction designed to enhance student learning in large practical classes."
• ‘An investigation of the effectiveness of electronic classroom communication systems in large lecture classes’ by Sharma, Khachan, Chan and O'Byrne (Australasian Journal of Education Technology, 2005). This describes their use of Clickers where “Students used the keypads to answer two step multiple choice problems after a discussion within their group. The questions were generated using students' answers from previous exams”.
• ‘Peer instruction: a case study for an introductory magnetism course’ by Lenaerts, Wieme and Van Zele (European Journal of Physics, 2003) notes "the positive impact of PI has been demonstrated... Special attention has been paid to the enhancement of the traditional lecture demonstrations by PI... The framework of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is offered as a pedagogical explanation for the effectiveness of PI."
• ‘Peer Instruction versus Class-wide Discussion in Large Classes: a comparison of two interaction methods in the wired classroom‘ by Nicol and Boyle (Studies in Higher Education, 2003) reports on research where Clickers were used to make it easier to give immediate feedback to students and to help manage Peer Instruction. The study discovered that the type of dialogue and discussion sequence have important effects on learning.
• ‘Peer instruction: Results from a range of classrooms’ by Fagen, Crouch and Mazur (The Physics Teacher, 2002) notes users reported that writing good questions can be a major obstacle. When no suitable questions had been written students were asked to read before the lecture to cover breadth and then in-depth study occurred in the lecture.
• ‘Peer Instruction: Ten years of experience and results’ by Crouch and Mazur (American Journal of Physics, 2001) reports data from ten years of teaching with Peer Instruction (PI). They also look at how they have improved their use of PI, for example they have “replaced in-class reading quizzes with pre-class written responses to the reading, introduced a research-based mechanics textbook for portions of the course, and incorporated cooperative learning into the discussion sections as well as the lectures."

ALT-C 2011: The Videos

Selected talks from ALT-C 2011 are now available on YouTube.

To give you an idea of what might be interesting to you I've listed the talks along with a quick overview of those that I've watched.

• "Well, the kookaburras thought it was funny anyway!" (27:20) - Gilly Salmon has moved to Australia and gives us a quick comparison of the two Higher Education systems.
• “The city as the learning environment: making change happen in Leicester's schools" (23:09) - Josie Fraser works on ICT strategy across Leicester's schools, and here she talks about ways in which the students there want to improve their schools and learning technology use. She finishes by talking about their strategy and aims.
• "Leadership in a cold climate: Leading where the past is no reliable guide to the future. A reflection on the strategic leadership of people, technology and institutions in UK HE" (32:46) [Presentation Slides] - Ewart Wooldridge from the Leadership Foundation for HE spoke about the need for agility and change in Higher Education. While technology can have transformative, strategic and operational change on a university, he notes that currently most change is operational and then looks at how less hierarchical models of leadership, respect for professional staff, more entrepreneurial work, and more collaboration, might enable the transformational and strategic change.
• "I Have a Blind Student in My Maths/Science Class, Should I panic? How to promote inclusion for blind students" (29:38) - By Donal Fitzpatrick, Lecturer at the School of Computing at Dublin University.
• "Remembering Robin Mason" (25:01) - By Sonam Penjor, Head of Educational Technology, Royal University of Bhutan, Bhutan.
• "The ROI of Online Collaboration: Doing More With Less" (31:02) - By Rajeev Arora, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy for Blackboard Collaborate.
• "On being public...how social media reshapes professional identity" (31:50) - By Anne-Marie Cunningham, Clinical Lecturer and Academic Lead for eLearning in the School of Medicine at Cardiff University.
• "JISC's support for learning and teaching in a changing educational environment" (30:51) - By Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary of JISC.
• "Open courses: Converting, launching, and letting go..." (28:04) - Jo Axe, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Management at Royal Roads University, Canada.
• "The elusive technological future" (51:39) - John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University.
• "The educational and social impacts of Plan Ceibal - a new approach to the use of technology in education" (1:02:28) - Miguel Brechner, President of the Uruguayan Centre for Technological and Social Inclusion.

[image by Jez Cope]

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