another take on clickers
our campus selected iclicker as a standard. the intent is that students
purchase one in their first year and have it available (with appropriate
change of batteries) for the remainder of their college education.
http://www.iclicker.com/
the system is simple and there is no semesterly fee.
the iclicker folk sent us a box of clickers for a conference demonstration
in which we handed out iclickers and another brand to the audience. although
we had never used the iclickers before, they worked flawless from both the
presenter and user side. we could never have done this with other more
sophisticated clicker systems that have learning curves and require
technological support.
there is a growing literature (books and articles) on clicker use, but
typically the key search term is "audience response system".
http://www.amazon.com/Audience-Response-Systems-Higher-Education/dp/1591409470/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203539621&sr=1-3
i use the clickers in a research methods class and operationally define
participation by evidence of answering a percentage of the clicker questions
for the day. Best practices say never use the clicker simply to take
attendance because more clickers than students have been know to show up.
the clickers work well for testing things other than knowledge such as
tracking relative progress on a study or other assignments.
although questions that generate many right answers are useful (as Sue
points out), the best questions are ones in which answers differ both from
the correct one and/or from one another. one can then focus on the
misconceptions. for example, one clicker question revealed that my students
thought that a dependent variable in a between subjects design was a
repeated measure (because there were n scores in the data file). once
students realize they are not the only one who is uncertain, they are more
willing to talk to one another and the instructor.
the clickers also work well for teaching and learning about aspects of APA
style, interpreting graphs, etc.
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