Clickers

Turning Technologies is the university-wide supported clicker vendor. See Clicker Fall 2009 Pilot at Northeastern University for additional information.

TurningPoint Anywhere (light version) and TurningPoint PowerPoint are both available on Northeastern University classroom instructor computers. You must log-in using the generic lab account for the room. The software will appear in the menu.

Watch an interview with Professor Ed Wertheim on his use of Clickers in a small classroom setting.

Watch an interview with Professor Leslie Day on her use of Clickers in a large classroom setting.

What faculty should know...

Clicker Test Kits Available

Small clicker test kits are now available for short-term loan from CIETL (Center for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning). The kits include 20 clickers remotes and one receiver. Please contact Kostia Bergman (x3496) for more information.

Steps to Get Started

If you are ready to begin using clickers in your teaching, review "Integrating Clickers in the Classroom". This page outlines the steps you must take to acquire clickers and access the software, and lists technical support information if you need assistance.

Faculty can checkout clicker receivers and request account access for ResponseWare at no cost. Call the Helpdesk at ext. 4357 to submit your request.

Equipment options include:

NEW! "PresenterCards" allow faculty to 'step away' from the computer and still have the ability to start/stop polls, navigate through slides and show/hide TurningPoint software window. Click here for directions on how to setup. Read more about PresenterCards
RF Receiver (Radio-Frequency) “Plug & play” USB RF receiver makes setup simple. No driver installation and allows for a 200 foot range (400 ft coverage). Does not need a “line of sight” with the ResponseCard keypads. For use with ResponseCard RF and ResponseCard XR keypads.
LR Receiver (Long Range) Ideal for large venues such as exhibit and conference halls and auditoriums. For use with ResponseCard RF and ResponseCard XR keypads.

What are Clickers?

Clickers, also known as classroom response systems, student response systems and audience response systems, have been around since the 1960s, initially as hard-wired systems, which were very expensive and rather inflexible. These evolved into infra-red systems. These systems, too, were inflexible. As a result, when a Northeastern University working group discussed clickers a few years ago, Information Services concluded that the technology had not yet matured, and was too much in flux to choose one system to standardize on.

The systems have advanced to the current versions of wireless radio frequency systems (a combination of hardware and software) and virtual clicker systems that are web-based and can be run from laptops or delivered to cell phones and PDAs without additional hardware. Now the technology has improved and stabilized, and various universities have conducted research about the effectiveness of the systems and detailed how to implement them effectively across campus.

The main goals for utilizing clicker technology with classes are to engage, assess and increase student success. Applications include:

Actively engage students through practice or review questions, can be in the form of games played individually or in teams
Conduct opinion surveys, provide visual representation of different perspectives
Pretest/posttest pairs – Pretests measure students’ entry knowledge of course topics and uncovers deficiencies; posttest measures mastery of course content. Provides visual feedback to students of how they compare to peers. Poll and re-poll in same session to measure gain in understanding
Promote collaboration – put students in groups, have them discuss a question, come to consensus, record their answer as a group, compare group responses, have students discuss
Generate instant feedback on question, issue or calculation
Increase communication – hear from every student in class on every question
Capture formative and summative assessment – measure student preparation, understanding or satisfaction
Gather research data

For students, clickers provide a means to actively participate in class, particularly in large classes. For faculty, clickers provide an alternate method of engaging students and measuring student comprehension.

Potential Use Scenarios (types of clicker uses)

The goals and priorities of a particular course will influence the design and implementation of clicker technology and the required capabilities of the system. The following descriptions represent potential scenarios for clicker uses in the classroom.

Early Discovery

Discussion Warm-Up/Class Icebreakers
Posing questions, giving students time to think about it, submitting their answers via clickers, and then displaying the results can be an effective way to warm-up a class for a class-wide discussion. Faculty can assess students’ fundamental knowledge from previous courses or class pre-work prior to beginning the day’s lecture. Compared with the approach of responding to the first hand that is raised after a question is asked, this approach gives all students time to think about and commit to an answer, setting the stage for greater discussion participation and an accurate assessment of class knowledge on a particular topic.

Immediate Feedback

Attendance
Clickers can be used to take attendance directly (e.g. asking students to respond to the question "Are you here today?") or indirectly by determining which students used their clickers during class. The later is most often used at Northeastern University today.
Contingent Teaching
Similarly, this can be applied in real-time. Since it can often be challenging for instructors to determine what students do and do not understand, instructors can use clickers to gauge student comprehension in real-time during class and modify their lesson plan accordingly. If the clicker data show that students understand a given topic, then the instructor can move on to the next one. If not, more time can be spent on the topic, perhaps involving more lecture, class discussion, or another clicker question.
Peer Instruction
The teacher poses a question to his or her students. The students ponder the question silently and transmit their individual answers using the clickers. The teacher checks the histogram of student responses. If significant numbers of students choose the wrong answer, the teacher instructs the students to discuss the question with their neighbor. After a few minutes of discussion, the students submit their answers again. This technique often (but not always!) results in more students choosing the correct answer as a result of the peer instruction phase of the activity. This is a fairly simple way to use clickers to engage a large number of students in discussions about course material. This approach can also set the stage for a class-wide discussion that more fully engages all students.
Data Collection
Data collection is something that has not been done regularly but is something that faculty have expressed interest in. Clickers can capture data on student responses and provide them with frequent indicators of both individual and class learning progress which include comparisons with peer groups, previous classes and demographic subgroups - to encourage positive effects of self-assessment and competition among students. Data can be divided into demographic categories to facilitate course revisions, to provide input to students on demographic positions, and to provide information for personnel research into critical topic areas.
Student Presentations
Clickers are not just for faculty facilitation. Some faculty have required students to use clickers for clinical case conferences, which include 80+ students. Students use clickers to maintain engagement and/or reinforce material during and after their presentation.

Retention

Measuring Comprehension
In general, instructors can create questions to measure comprehension and determine what students already know or don’t know. This includes:
- Review of topics presented in previous classes
- Review of material covered in the homework
In order to assess students’ understanding of topics previously covered or material covered in the homework, begin the class lecture with a number of questions or scenarios for group work to gauge their level of understanding. If 90% get the answer correct, move on. If the numbers are lower, be prepared to review the topic before moving on.
Assessment (Formative)
Clickers can be used to pose questions to students and collect their answers for the purpose of providing real-time information about student learning to both the instructor and the students. Students can use this feedback to monitor their own learning, and instructors can use it to change how they manage class "on the fly" in response to student learning needs.

In order to give students the chance to monitor their grade, increase participation, and encourage student use, a points system can be implemented. For example, one faculty member provides points strictly for participation. To make it more valuable for the students, she gives full credit (1) if the student gets 67% or higher, half credit (.5) for below 67% and no credit (0) if the student is absent. These scores are 5 or 10% of their total grade. This type of grading system rewards students for any response but provides more points if students answer correctly. Therefore, students have an incentive to take the questions seriously. A secondary result: more students attend class.
Assessment (Summative)
Due to concerns of accuracy and cheating, most faculty at Northeastern University do not use clickers for graded quizzes or tests. However, clickers can be used for graded activities, such as multiple-choice quizzes or even tests.
Final Exam Reviews
Take it one step further: the top-25 students in points receive extra credit. During the last class of the semester, faculty can review for a final exam by having the top-25 students compete with each other to answer potential final exam questions using clickers. Reviewing in this manner engages the entire class and allows every student to learn.

Other techniques used at other Universities

Repeated Questions
In the peer instruction approach described above, students respond to a given question twice--once after thinking about their answer individually and again after discussing it with their neighbor. Some instructors ask the same question several times, with different activities in between rounds of voting designed to help students better answer the question. For instance, an instructor might have the students answer the question individually, then discuss it with their neighbor and respond, then participate in a class-wide discussion and respond, and then listen to a mini-lecture on the topic and respond. For particularly challenging questions, this can be an effective technique for helping students discover and explore course material.
"Choose Your Own Adventure" Classes
In this technique, an instructor poses a problem along with several possible approaches to solving it--perhaps approaches suggested by students during class. The instructor has the students vote on which approach to pursue first, then explores that approach with the students. Afterwards, the students vote on which approach to pursue next.
Case Study in Biology/Genetics
In this “clicker case,” students read about a murder committed in Wales, then learn about DNA structure and replication and how scientists have adapted these concepts to develop processes for use in forensic analysis. The students use this knowledge to identify possible suspects in the crime. The case study is presented in class via PowerPoint, with multiple-choice questions sprinkled throughout the “lecture.” Students are expected to answer the questions as they arise using their clickers. Many instructors allow students to consult with their neighbor before clicking in their answer. The entire approach encourages student participation even in the largest of classes. The use of clickers in combination with case studies is described in greater detail in the article “Clicker” Cases: Introducing Case Study Teaching Into Large Classrooms. PowerPoint Slides
Question-Driven Instruction
This approach combines contingent teaching and peer instruction. Lesson plans consist entirely of clicker questions. Which questions are asked depends entirely on how students answer the questions. An instructor might come into class with a stack of clicker questions, with multiple questions on each topic. As students perform well on clicker questions, the instructor moves on to questions on new topics. As students perform poorly, the instructor asks further questions on the same topic. The instructor does not have a lesson plan in the traditional sense when using this approach. Instead, the course of the class is determined reactively to demonstrated student learning needs.

Best Practices

From the Article: Making Good Clicker Questions (from Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning, Derek.bruff@vanderbilt.edu)

TP Msg. #950 Clickers TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(sm) eMAIL NEWSLETTER

"Successful use of clickers turns on the skillful use of good questions. "Writing good questions I would have to say is the hardest part" of teaching with clickers, says Bruff. But it's also the most exciting part because it causes faculty to become intensely intentional about their teaching moment to moment, not just lecture to lecture. "That's why I like to talk about clickers with faculty," says Bruff, "because it generates this kind of conversation: 'What are my learning goals for my students?"

There are content questions asking for recall of information, conceptual questions seeking evidence of understanding, application questions, critical thinking questions, and free-response questions. When and how to ask the right kind of question with students actually sitting before the faculty member becomes the proof of good teaching in that moment.

One of the most interesting aspects to emerge from the use of clickers has to do with the flexibility of the multiple choice question to stimulate thinking and learning. "Many people think of the multiple choice question as being only about factual recall," says Bruff, but the one-best-answer variation probes much deeper. "A really good teacher can write really good wrong answers to a question," says Bruff, ones that key into common student difficulties with material. "...when I really like 40-60% of my students to get it wrong. And I'd like them to be split between a right choice and several wrong choices, because then that means I have tapped into some misconceptions that are fairly common and need to be addressed and the question is hard enough to be worth talking about."

Links

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