As regular readers of this blog know, I use clickers in all of my classes (see this New York Times story) and wrote an article on my experience. Taking Back the Law School Classroom: Using Technology to Foster Active Student Learning, 54 J. Legal Educ. 551 (2004). Yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed reports that early data support their use: Keeping Clickers in the Classroom, by Andy Guess:
[T]his year’s BbWorld ‘08 conference [focused on] … how best to marshal the latest information technology … for educational ends. …
[O]ne simple little device that received some notice during the conference’s last day may be on its way to delivering on its hype: the humble clicker. The small, handheld wireless input tools that resemble a miniature remote control have gradually found their way into high-tech classrooms over the past several years — especially in business-oriented fields — with some instructors swearing by them and others dismissing them as yet another needless gizmo. But what if they’re not?
Recent studies at Ohio State University, for example, found that students in physics classes making regular use of clickers — in quizzes, for example — earned final exam scores that were about 10 percentage points higher than those without. …
Kathy Keairns, a senior instructional design coordinator at the University of Denver, talked about her institution’s experience with clickers and how they’ve improved the quality of instruction and learning there. In one chemistry class, for example, the professor assigned 10% of the course grade to “clicker questions” asked in class — three points per session, one for attendance and the other two for correct answers. The results, she said, were increased attendance, more active participation in class and more cooperative learning, since students discussed the questions before they answered them with their clickers. 90% of the students in the general chemistry course rated the devices as “useful” or “very useful.” A political science professor who used clickers to demonstrate public opinion polling concepts in class also found that the quality of discussions improved, Keairns said. Other benefits, she added, were an emphasis on “time on task” and the availability of prompt feedback.
So do clickers enhance student learning? As with many classroom technologies, the answer, she said, is: “It depends.” Clickers have to be used properly and in combination with well-designed and well-thought-out questions that are delivered with enough discussion and context.
