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This past year I revised a well-established
large-lecture course for non-majors to integrate the use of the
Turning Technologies "clickers". Among my goals was having more
interaction with the students in this class (size ranges from 60 to
over 100 depending on the semester). Another goal was to replicate
what I had heard and read about students better
retaining
information when it was "polled" upon. I also took this as an
opportunity to think more generally about how to change the
structure of lectures to be more interesting and to better convey
the connections between the class material and societal issues (one
of the goals of the course). Clicker participation was integrated
into the course grading, and it was announced that the two lowest
(or missed) clicker days for each student would be dropped as a
catch-all to cover simple technology glitches. After using the
clickers for two semesters, I can say that I feel that it was a
success at various levels, but that some of my results were
disappointing.
Over the course of the semester, when polling was used it felt like
more students were actively engaged in the class than in previous
semesters.
Among the successes, I think the class atmosphere benefited
most. For some topics that some students feel are rather dry,
clickers were used to make the class proceed in a different way.
For example, when looking at technology history lessons, clicker
polling was used to advance the timeline of the technology by
asking students in what year they thought certain things were
created. In another instance when discussing questions of
copyright and ethics, polling was used to walk the class through
a series of ethical scenarios related to obtaining books to
read. As a result I was able to raise questions about pairs of
scenarios in which the author’s income was equally affected but
where the polling reflected very different opinions on whether
the action was acceptable. Overall, using graded clicker polling
during the semester worked far better than earlier attempts at
asking student to vote on things via a show of hands.
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...I felt myself enjoying class more and feeling more in touch with
the "pulse" of the students as a result of the higher level of
interaction created by using clickers.
Over the course of the semester, when polling was used it felt like
more students were actively engaged in the class than in previous
semesters. While a
subjective observation, this is supported by polling performed on
the last day of class both semesters where I polled the students on
the statement "I think that the use of clickers made the class more
interesting". Out of the 112
students who participated in the poll, 64 of them (57%) either
Agreed or Strongly Agreed with the statement (41 Agreed, 23 Strongly
Agreed) while only 28 of them (25%) either Disagreed or Strongly
Disagreed (21 Disagreed, 7 Strong Disagreed) with the statement.
This general feeling was
also reflected by higher attendance (by visual observation and
comparison to past semesters) overall.
This higher attendance probably helped lead to a perceived
reduction in the number of questions sent via e-mail regarding
project topics that had been explicitly discussed in class.
A secondary bonus effect on the class was that as the instructor, I
felt myself enjoying class more and feeling more in touch with the
"pulse" of the students as a result of the higher level of
interaction created by using clickers.
I was able to engage far more students than previously when
simply asking for a show of hands.
This in turn inspired me to generate more interesting and
thought-provoking polling questions throughout the semester, even
after I had moved past the set of polling slides that I had mapped
out in advance.
Among the successes, I think the class atmosphere benefited most.
However, the experience hasn’t been without some unexpected
disappoint-
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-ments. When writing the first exam, I had around a dozen
multiple-choice questions already written in the form of clicker
polling slides. While I
would typically pull some fill-in and/or short-answer questions from
this material, I decided that an interesting (if potentially skewed)
initial "test" of the clickers themselves was to simply put polling
questions onto the exam verbatim and see how well the students
performed. The class
average on those questions was actually lower than the average on
the rest of the exam.
Reviewing those questions, it was true that I had polled on many of
them because I knew they represented concepts that students had
trouble with previously.
Also, students who were not attending to participate in the
polls could have brought the average down.
Pearson correlation tests between individual clicker
participation points and clicker exam question scores showed no
significant relationship between the two.
The same approach was used on the second exam, and again
showed no significant correlation between student grades on clicker
questions and their participation in clicker polling.
There was a pattern of interest related to
clicker participation.
Rounding to the nearest percentage, the average clicker
participation grade of A students was an 87%, of B students was an
84%, of C students was a 76%, and of D and F students combined was
59%. While not a
measure of the direct effectiveness of clickers, this is interesting
to consider in terms of class attendance and performance.
Combined with the lack of one-to-one correlation, what this
signals to me is that while there is an overall relationship between
student attendance and performance, that showing up and
participating in the polling is not enough to uniformly effect
individual grades.
Based on the positive classroom aspects of
clickers, and the fact that they appear to have led to an increase
in attendance which by itself has a positive effect, I have decided
to continue to use clickers with this course in the future.
I also plan to explore how to take advantage of the positive
observations via occasional use in other courses, without having any
portion of the class grade assigned to participation.
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