Comments on Clickers, Pedagogy and Edtechtainment

• pedagogy to enhance technology
• Posted by Priyavrat Thareja at Punjab Engineering College, on June 20, 2008 at 7:15am EDT

• The write up concluding Groveman prefers technology to enhance pedagogy, is an another assault on poor teaching. But who contradicts the use of technology to enhance pedagogy. The outcome of gadgetary has though been to make money, but it could not have come up unless there were demand. And teachers are quite technology savvy, thanks to their higher average intelligence than the common average users.

  But yes the opposite of this i.e. 'pedagogy to enhance technology' is equally true. can some one create a useful gadget without having faced the rut in the class and/or having achieved the innovative/ inventive power to do so? Such things are /have been learnt some where through the educational process! if one understands what right education is?

  Priyavrat Thareja

• Posted by Will Brehm at Lehigh University on June 20, 2008 at 9:25am EDT

• As a recent college graduate, I have been privy to sit in classrooms where teachers experiment with technologies of different kinds. From clickers to blogs--I've seen it all. Here's my take: No matter what new technology a teacher uses, learning will always have an inverse relationship to class size; lectures, no matter what technology is used, will not foster a true learning experience.

  Incorporating technology in mid-size classes (40ish students) works the best in my experience. Classes of 20 students or below do not need much technology beyond a VCR or a computer; the discussion in these classes, which is where I personally learned the most in college, will always (depending on the teacher and the students present) thrive. But for those classes that reside in the in-between zone, not seminar size and not lecture size, technology can truly help. For example, in a course with over 40 students enrolled on international relation theories, the class was broken into blog groups, approximately 5 in all, to try to increase student participation. Each week we were required to write one blog post on our personal thoughts to the readings and a second blog post in response to another students first post. It worked. We came into class already understanding our own thoughts, so even in a 40-person class class discussion thrived. These group blogs, though, would not work in smaller classes or in large classes. Maybe the blogs worked because of the teacher?

  Regardless of this successful example, I see technology in the classrooms a lot like special effects in movies: it can only enhance the final product--not be the corner stone. (Think of Forest Gump: lots of special effects, yet most viewers never realize it! That's what I'm talking about.)

  Universities and colleges should not invest money into incorporating new technology into large classrooms; instead, they should hire additional professors, so the lecture hall class size can be spilt into smaller classes . At this point, the technology needed to bolster learning is free! (The blogs in my class were all built on Google's blogspot.)

  Technology is not the answer. Good teachers are. And great teachers find amazing ways to incorporate technology into classroom. All those teachers using technology ineffectively are just looking for ways to cover up . It's time to get real and focus on learning!

• Retro-Technology
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 20, 2008 at 9:25am EDT

• Clickers are a one-way system, designed as a profit center by text-book publishers, which encourage short answers and, at best, coerce attendance (though plenty of groups of students now send one student in to the lecture hall with multiple clickers to foil this).

  If faculty wanted to use communications technology to improve interaction in the lecture hall they'd use SMS systems on the mobile phones the students already own. This would allow questions and thoughts, not just "True/False" or "A, B, C..." And it would cost the universities, and especially the students, far less.

  The clicker is just the 21st Century course "workbook." A way for publishers to rip off students for a few extra bucks with the complicity of faculty members unwilling or unable to develop their own ways to engage students.

  But if you call them on this -
  http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/02/instant-anachronism.html
  be sure that the powers-that-be will get mighty angry.

• Smaller Classes are Better
• Posted by Eric Brandon on June 20, 2008 at 10:30am EDT

• I agree with Will Brehm who stated that good teachers and smaller classes are what makes things happen in the classroom. I have been fortunate as both a student and college professor when it comes to class size. I spent the first two years of college at a community college. The average class size was about 25, and some classes got down to 10-12 students. I found some very inspiring professors at that community college, and I took multiple courses form them. When I transferred to a 4-year school, I was able to take upper division courses with similar numbers of students. I remember enrolling in a History of Psychology course as a junior. It sounded interesting, but it was held in a movie theater near campus. The theater was enormous, and the professor used a microphone. I was sitting in the middle of the theater on the second day of class when it struck me that this was a complete waste of time. I could barely see the professor in from of the huge movie screen. I got up, left, and immediately dropped the course. Large lecture halls without small discussion groups or labs send one message to the students. We don't care about you.

  As a professor, I've taught at smaller, private universities, and I currently teach at a community college. My class sizes have almost always been 25-30 and frequently smaller. I don't need a clicker or anything else in the classroom. I teach philosophy, and I can just ask the students if they are following an argument, or if they have a question, or what they believe on an issue, or why they believe that, or anything else I want. Bascially, I use my brain, my voice, and a whiteboard. I'm close enough to them that I can read facial expressions, and the courses are intimate enough for students to freely engage myself and each other.

  How hard is it to be passionate about the subject matter and be inspiring to your students? It's not hard if the professor really loves to teach. In my experience, passionate teaching, knowledge of the subject matter, some organization, and smaller classes generally leads to attendance, learning, and enjoyment on the part of the students. If the discipline or subject matter calls for some technology, then by all means use it. But if technology is substituted for passion and intimacy, then I doubt if much deep learning is going to take place other than whatever some of the more dedicated/talented students are capable of on their own.

  Of course, someone will object that small class sizes cost money. Of course they do. I would respond by saying that a good education costs money. So, if we aren't willing to spend the money, then let's be honest and tell students that we don't think that they really deserve a good education. We'll give them mediocre teaching and they will give us mediocre effort. And if we are honest about this, then we can stop all of this whining about how horrible the students are and we can stop all of this nonesense about how everything would be great if we could just use the right technology.

• Inappropriate Technology
• Posted by LogicGuru on June 20, 2008 at 10:30am EDT

• They're pushing clickers at my place, where average class size is about 30 students, and I got one as a free sample. But I'm not going to use it because it's not cost-effective. They're cute, but using them isn't worth the effort of getting the system set up and restructuring classes to incorporate clicker routines. To use them, you have to use powerpoint, and I can't reasonably do that teaching logic--at least not effectively: I need to dance around doing those proofs on the board. I can't justify making students buy these gizmos on top of the already overpriced books they're stuck buying.

  Here though is a prime example of inappropriate technology--where the technology drives the teaching rather than vice versa. We're encouraged to use this gimmickry, including expensive packages like WebCT, which include features no one uses, which are more trouble than they're worth, inflexible and uneconomical but it's like pulling teeth to get the cheaper technology we could really use.

  We get pious speeches about how we need to accommodate to this new generation who swim in a sea of tech, plugged into iPods at all times, living on Facebook, blah-blah-blah. We're told that we're just luddites if we don't use it, and the naive are shamed. Give me a break. I've had class websites up for years. I use technology to make my work and students' work more efficient and convenient--and cheaper. I went textbook-free for a class this spring, with all readings linked to the class website, and I plan to ditch the textbook for another class next academic year.

  That is what technology is for: to make what we do easier, more efficient, less time-consuming and cheaper--not to make it more cumbersome and time-consuming, and to pass the costs on to students.

• Spot On
• Posted by International Professors at international professors project on June 20, 2008 at 11:20am EDT

• Well thought through point of view, as pedagogy includes many methods; even, dare I say, rote learning is worthwhile, when used very sparingly, for a specific purpose.

  International Professors
  www.internationalprofs.org

• Technology enhancement
• Posted by Fred Flener , Retired at Northeastern Illinois University on June 20, 2008 at 1:50pm EDT

• Of course, small class size helps, but I found that Blackboard helped even classes of, say 20, because as talented as I was at getting students to participate, many just never participated much. It is simply mathematics. In a 75 minute class, I spoke for, say 30 minutes (It was my job to offer some wisdom, wasn't it?) which left the students with a couple of minutes each. Of course, you always had the one who contributed whether or not the contribution was worthwhile, and there were were many who found it difficult to speak up "on the spot" without reflective thought first. So, I "required" students to write a couple hundred words each week on the relevant topic. It was very open-ended, no capitalization necessary, free-form spelling, etc.,--simply a certain number of words. As the semester progressed the quality of thinking improved significantly, and inevitably, students began challenging each other's opinions, etc. Of course, there were formal writing assignments in which the quality of the writing became part of the assessment. However, even the formal assignments were sent electronically. (Why waste paper?) When I graded them, it was easy for me to comment parenthetically within the papers themselves, then to write a formal review and assign a grade.

  In other words, technology really enhanced the quality of the classroom. However, there is no way I could have done this if I had a large lecture class. All that is possible with lectures and technology is to put "stuff" on line for all to read, and there is little opportunity for the type of interaction I mentioned above. Possibly, if I taught at a large research institution, it might be possible to use "underlings"--TA's to interact with students (actually, they might be better at it than I), but certainly it is impossible for a single professor, even if they sleep only an hour a night, to be as highly interactive with 100 or more students as I was with 20 or less.

• We must learn to leverage technology
• Posted by Rod Bell , Adjunct Professor at College of DuPage on June 20, 2008 at 2:20pm EDT

• Professor Groveman's argument (or rant?) may be appealing to academic sensibilities, but it's woefully deficient in terms of the critical thinking he espouses. He constructs, without evidence, a typical use-case scenario for the use of clickers and then ridicules the scenario. The one he made up. All the while, he carefully defends his own readiness to use technology to improve his courses, but deplores the (undemonstrated) tendency to accede to dumbing down scenarios in obeisance to technology.

  Most of the comments on Professor Groveman's article echo the familiar claim that "small classes are better," as though that settled the matter. Eric Brandon further notes, correctly, that "small class sizes cost money," and that if we won't spend that kind of money, we should admit that "we don't think that [students] really deserve a good education."

  I'm not sure we can buy into the idea that anyone "deserves" a post-high school education, but we may agree that our society is best served when individuals in it are optimally educated, for there appears to be a pay-back, yes, an economic gain, from education. Obviously, this pay-back will be suboptimal if the education provided is suboptimal.

  But what is "optimal" education? We can hardly avoid the conclusion that it's possible to spend too much on education. For example, if we endeavored to provide each and every individual with a personal tutor, a tutor who has been sufficiently educated to satisfactoriy fulfill his/her role as tutor, we would likely have undertaken an economically unsustainable project. The cost of the tutors would overwhelm the economic benefits to the students.

  The much beloved "small classes" of halcyon days gone by were and are a means of expanding educational opportunities to the "common man." We have seen rapid growth in educational institutions at all levels over the past century. But in a pattern that has plagued expanding systems of all kinds, from empires to businesses to national economies, the cost of maintaining those systems becomes overwhelmingly burdensom as further expansion yields marginally smaller returns. And that's where we are in higher education.

  In fact, the cost of small classes has already mandated the "mediocre teaching" and "mediocre [student] effort" that Eric ambiguously refers to (is he predicting or describing?). We need only to survey the market salaries for a range of journeyman knowledge workers (who constitute the bulk of the workforce) to see that, were we to staff our high schools and colleges appropriately (i.e., where the teachers have a reasonable claim to intellectual authority in their fields), the cost would be prohibitive.

  Information technology has enabled business to raise mid-level remuneration to pretty high levels; gone are the days when we can call families earning more than $100K or even $200K "well off" or "high income." But education has not learned that trick. We have the knowledge, much of it concentrated in fairly elite schools; we have not learned how to leverage that knowledge through technology.

• Which technology is a legitimate question
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 20, 2008 at 4:05pm EDT

• I am confused by Rod Bell's comment. My observations of clicker use, and most of the research on clicker use, suggests that this technology is used almost exclusively in "canned" form, as delivered from the textbook publisher. If that is a model of technology efficiency - fine - we can simply replace all classes currently taught as lectures with "interactive" (I'm using quotes because this is not interactive at all, but electronic assessment) video presentations.

  There's nothing wrong with that if you think education flows best in a single direction. In fact, it is not just more efficient, it is fairer. By embracing the clicker model and sticking with the lecture form we can not only save huge costs of both space and faculty (we'd need just one economics prof, nationwide) but can allow students to take these courses wherever and whenever they like.

  The question then becomes, what do you want education to do, and which technologies enable that. Clickers may very well be the best way to determine rapidly if a large group of students in a large room (or people masquerading as those students) think Statement A is True or False. They may not have any actual purpose beyond that.

  The other technologies discussed in the comments - for example on-line discussions (where I have also witnessed that different students participate in different ways than "in-class" discussions) - or the use of Google Docs for group writing where every contributors contributions can be tracked - or using a Skype Video Call to bring a distant expert into a room - or the rapid ability to retrieve information relevant to a class discussion through mobile devices - these all support other forms of teaching. Just as older technologies - books and chalkboards for example - do.

  So the question of clickers is not a technology question. The question of clickers is a pedagogical question. Is the educational experience enhanced by limiting the possible student response choices? Is the lecture format worth trying to save in its physical form or should it be fully replaced by technology? Should curriculum decisions be completely in the hands of textbook publishers? Your answers to these questions will largely determine how you feel about clickers.

• Posted by Phil Hultin , Professor of Chemistry at University of Manitoba on June 20, 2008 at 5:30pm EDT

• It must be reiterated that the clicker is just a tool. It is not intrinsically good or bad, and it does not intrinsically create good or bad outcomes. Like any tool, the quality of the finished product reflects the skill of the hand using the tool.

  We have used clickers in first-year and second-year chemistry classes. Initially I was extremely sceptical of the clickers - I do not approve of multiple-choice evaluation as a general rule. However, I must admit that in the first-year course I taught last fall the clicker worked out pretty well. I also observed that in order to come up with worthwhile clicker questions I had to spend A LOT OF TIME! It is trivial to come up with multiple choice questions but it is very hard to come up with GOOD multiple choice questions - ones that demand real understanding from students but that are not overly complex.

  Our student feedback on the clickers was extremely positive, but the outcome on the final exam was indistinguishable from previous years. So, did the clicker work?

  In the winter I tried the clicker in a second-semester organic chemistry class. This was not so successful because our emphasis is on problem-solving and reaction mechanism, not topics that lend themselves to "A", "B", "C", "D", "E" responses. Again, I found it extremely hard to come up with good questions.

  Student feedback for this course was absolutely neutral. Although the students seemed to think I had managed to come up with questions that were relevant to our course objectives, they also thought that the clicker was no better than a traditional way of presenting and testing that material. Note that they didn't say it was worse - just no better.

  So my conclusion is that the clicker might be a useful tool for some classes but not for all. There is no need to rant about clickers. If you think the tool might help, then use it, and if not, leave it alone. That's what I am doing.

• Thank Goodness For Technology
• Posted by Frizbane Manley on June 21, 2008 at 6:05pm EDT

• I’m guessing I’ve got you all beat. During fall term, 2007 I taught a graduate class to one student (he happened to be an undergraduate) at Duke, and on another occasion in my “illustrious” academic career I taught a workshop to 2,300 members of the UAW (I used PowerPoint and focused attention on trying to give the participants some sense of what the silly buzzwords of six-sigma quality are all about). The “classroom” was a “remodeled” Ford Motor Company warehouse, and there were five very large screens projecting my images here and there. Of course I have done EVERYTHING in between.

  Blackboard, PowerPoint, clickers ... I vote for them all. The more incompetent “teachers” we have in front of the classroom and the more marginally competent, non-scholarly, academics we entrust our students (our customers?) to, the more important it is to have access to these so-called instructional aids.

  I used to take pride in my ability to “read” my students’ faces and interpret their answers to my questions, but, alas, that was long before the new technology hit the market and made that sort of pedagogical astuteness unnecessary. Along with LogicGuru, I love the slow, deliberate presentation of mathematics ... not the slick, errorless presentation one commands with PowerPoint. It’s hard to beat the tentative, questioning, error-prone approach that is much more consistent with how mathematics (statistics, logic, science) actually proceeds in the real world. I love to work backwards from incorrect statements I wrote on the blackboards ... then greenboards ... then whiteboards that were almost always based on my students’ suggestions. “Ah yes, that did seem like a good idea, but now we can see why it didn’t work. We won’t be tempted to make that mistake next time.” Good grief, how often does that happen with PowerPoint?

  I recall teaching basic statistics for social scientists to more than 125 students in 104 Physics Auditorium at the University of Michigan and having a real sense of who was catching on and who was having difficulties I could address on the fly ... but that was then.

  Thank goodness those days are over and we can rely on technology to optimize our instructional strategies. I do lament the fact, however, that we can say about waaay too many of those standing in front of our students today, “Hir knowledge of the subject is PowerPoint deep.”

  P.S. I showed this article to my young son, a recent Computer Science graduate of the University of Michigan. He laughed and asked, “Did I ever tell you that in my really boring CS XXX course in which the professor used clickers, the students all conspired to drive him crazy by giving him bizarre feedback? That was much more entertaining for us than the course itself.”

• Reply to Ira Socol
• Posted by Rod Bell , Adjunct Professor at College of DuPage on June 22, 2008 at 1:40pm EDT

• First, I should admit that I did to Professor Groveman what I accused him of doing to us (me), namely, I created a target and then shot at it, with the implication that someone else had erected the target.

  But Ira Socol found my comments confusing, as in, I guess, What’s my point?

  My basic contention is that technology is our best hope for revitalizing and expanding the efficacy of education as an economic and cultural driver, and that we have not yet discovered how to get our arms around this potential.

  I don’t agree with Socol that, at the limits, we could imagine a national, one-professor lecture, for that understates the pedagogical value of live lectures (more on this point below). I’ll even go out on a limb and say that I do, indeed, “think education flows best in a single direction.” But the curious thing is, if the student is being educated, she must be sufficiently engaged by the content to make it her own, and that’s an interactive process, not a one-way process. With the possible exception of the rare autodidact, this interaction with “knowledge” will be experienced as relating to authority, the “authority of the teacher.” Mere acquiescence is a kind of avoidance of authority, an acknowledgment with no contact.

  So the direction of authority is "one way," but the student's encounter with that authority is a dialectic, two-way (three?) process. Our romantic conceit that we should “teach students to think” or even “question authority” is valid only to the extent that we, ourselves, represent the authority of our subject field, so our students can encounter us as authoritative. Some of our students will then be well served if they can challenge us; others if they are challenged by us; others if they can only believe us. Though the knowledge we represent may flow one way, the student’s engagement with that knowledge is a dialectic, a both-ways engagement.

  Right now, as Frizbane Manley puts it, waaay too many of our teachers are “PowerPoint deep” and hence cannot, I would argue, sustain the both-ways engagement I’ve posited. Nor can I see a systemic solution to that problem that doesn’t manage to engage the very many with the relatively few. The old model, which depends on the education system’s ability to produce proportionate numbers of derivative, but still authentic, representative authorities in front of 25-student classrooms is just economically unfeasible today. Technology can dramatically change this 1:25 ratio, I believe, but it will require a meta-idea, a la Paul Romer, to accomplish that. (I am modestly trying my hand at a meta-idea in a still-unfinished poster/paper presentation, “Political Art,” at this fall’s APSA meetings.)

  I’m saying, we haven’t found a meta-idea that will enable us to effectively leverage technology in education; but the (accurate) criticism that technology merely augments the present system misses the point with its (correct) argument that technology is not pedagogy. I’m saying, there can be no adequate pedagogy for today’s, let alone tomorrow’s, everyman except via new technological applications.

  I hope that’s clearer. As for Professor Socol’s specific questions:
  Q - Is the educational experience enhanced by limiting the possible student response choices? A – Probably not as a rule, but computer logic demonstrates that binary choices can build enormously complex logic systems, so this answer bears, at most, upon typical clicker uses, not on how clickers might be used. For example, you could teach a large class a lot of surprising and challenging truths about how voting works and doesn’t work by letting them try to achieve their preferred policy outcomes through a series of clicker vote choices.
  Q. - Is the lecture format worth trying to save in its physical form or should it be fully replaced by technology? A – The much-abused lecture format absolutely should be saved, and clickers might help to enlarge the optimum audience from, say, 100 to maybe 300ish or thereabouts. But, as a rule, lectures should be few and far between, imo, and they should be a “big deal,” as in, “I heard Ira Socol give a live lecture” sort of thing, or “I was there when Bell gave his first lecture on technology-mediated authority systems.” Or, you know, whatever.
  Q. - Should curriculum decisions be completely in the hands of textbook publishers? A - Conceivably, a textbook publisher could take the lead in implementing a technology-enabled breakthrough in education, but in practice the chances of it are virtually nil. Publishers will continue to try to extract market share from the “as is;” they won’t invest much in an unproven “will be” concept. But let’s be fair: Publishers are trying to gain share in the market we are giving them.

• The Company Strikes Back.
• Posted by Anonymous on June 22, 2008 at 10:00pm EDT

• So, here is an email I just got from Clicker HQ. The suggestion that commentators on this board weren't "expert" in clicker use is at least misleading and, it seems to me, that if representatives of the firm that promotes these devices want to put their $.02 in they should comment themselves.

  Hello:
  
  There is an interesting clicker debate raging at http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/06/19/groveman. It started with an article by Alan Groveman in which he states, “Clickers may, initially, engage students. However, there is a risk that using clickers can foster an epistemology predicated on achieving a correct answer rather than challenging a student’s schema and insisting on some modicum of inductive thinking. Critical thinking demands methodical and careful reasoning. Can clickers, often used with the goal of responding in a multiple choice format, successfully achieve this core educational objective?”
  
  There is a vigorous discussion on this page, but it seems that only people who are not experts in the use of clickers are participating.
  
  In my discussions with many of you, I have come to the conclusion that clickers are not only used to check mechanical learning, but also to develop high order thinking and to stimulate more vigorous discussions.
  
  This article was posted on Friday and it is still available on the homepage. I thought some of you might have some important information to share with these people about how you use clickers to get more out of your students.
  
  Take care.
  
  John
  
  John Burgess, BSME, MBA
  Education Consultant
  eInstruction.com
  InterwriteLearning.com
  ExamView.com
  561-889-6585

• Clickers, Pedagogy, and Edtechtainment
• Posted by George A. Kuck , Dr. at CSULB on June 22, 2008 at 10:00pm EDT

• I have now used clickers in a total of 4 classes with over 100 students per class. I find the questions of Dr. Groveman fascinating. I have several questions that are not apparent in the article. What class sizes did he teach? Is he at a private university or a state college? Is he talking about introductory courses or higher level courses? Did he do a pretest and post test series of tests with and without clickers to try to quantify his observations or is this another "feel good" set of observations?

  My introductory physics and physical science classes are large (over 100 students), at a state university, and without TA support. How in blazes does Dr. Groveman anticipate my getting the students intellectually involved when I cannot even get them to read the text before class? I have pretested and post tested the classes with tests I have given for the past 5 years. There is no large student gain with and without the use of clickers. However, both attendance records and written student evaluations have made the point that more students are coming to class. For this reason alone I find clickers useful.

  I am still evaluating clicker use due to their expense to my students. At the end of last semester I started to use them with peer instruction in my physics class. I found this helped the student short term learning and understanding as shown on their final exam. In short, clickers are not a panacea but it appears that they will become a valuable teaching tool once I become more familiar with them and develop appropriate material to effectively use them.

• Clickers give good measurement
• Posted by Ellis Godard , Assistant Professor at CSUN on June 23, 2008 at 5:05am EDT

• Perhaps Groveman prefers dichotomized questions, where students can raise their hands or not in a binary fashion. Clickers, by contrast, provide not only multiple choices to a question - including some answers that may be or seem similar, and thereby add subtlety to the exercise - but the ability to cross-tabulate answers, something impractical (if not impossible) for any class larger than a small seminar. They thus provide several ways in which answers themselves can be examined and reconstructed.

  The board room analogy, by the by, seems weak, if not absurd. A CEO may lead discussion towards board-generated discussion and board-run decision-making. My students are rarely empowered make decisions about the content or direction of a course - although I've used the relatively precise measurements (and cross-measurements) provided by clicker technology to ascertain whether a point has been missed or misunderstood, and the degree to which any exercise or pedagogical tool (including clickers) are reaching and teaching students. And on that latter point, student reaction has been clear: On a multiple-choice question I use multiple times each semester, well more than 60% typically choose answer A: "Clickers rock my world."

• To Anonymous
• Posted by John B. on June 23, 2008 at 6:00am EDT

• My intention in suggesting that my customers contribute to this discussion was to add the opinions of successful academic users so that it was not so one sided. I did not want this to become a commercial for the products I promote. Per your suggestion, if I have time tomorrow, I will make a point-by-point commentary.

  Since you took the opportunity to reveal my personal information to the world, you might have at least extended to me the courtesy of sharing your name or contacting me privately.

• Opinions w/o reference to research
• Posted by Steve Ehrmann , Dir. Flashlight Program at The Teaching, Learning and Technology Group Inc. on June 23, 2008 at 10:00am EDT

• A quick scan of the original article and all the comments so far reveal that they all have two things in common:
  a) they all refer to two topics on which a lot of research has been done: class size and clickers
  b) they don't refer to any of that research
  c) much of what many of them say is contradicted by that research. (I wonder why Insider Higher Ed published this essay in the first place, actually.)

  Class size: the way most faculty teach and the way most faculty test learning, class size has surprisingly modest impact on learning. (I think that's an unfortunate clue about how we teach and test.)
  Pascarella, Ernest T. And Patrick T. Terenzini (1991). How College Affects Students: Findings and Insights from Twenty Years of Research, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

  Clickers: as a number of people commented, clickers are a tool, and they can be used in many ways, some proven, some unproven (and some silly).

  One way of using clickers involves asking students conceptually challenging questions, questions that can't be answered by remembering what's been heard or read. Students answer the question and then, if answers differ substantially, they're challenged to talk with the person next to them, to see if together they can answer the question. After consultation, they each are asked to respond again. The process seems to lead to deeper, more lasting understanding. Eric Mazur of Harvard is the best known advocate of this approach.

  The clickers don't "cause" the learning, any more than the paper in a physics textbook or the blackboard behind the faculty member "cause" learning. But like them, clickers are a powerful tool in the proper circumstances and in the right hands.

  http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/6/1/9

• Responses
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 23, 2008 at 10:15am EDT

• First, Dr. Bell: Just to clear things up, I am not a professor, just a grad student. That said (and with a nod to the corporation's John Burgess who assumes I know nothing about these devices), my field is educational technology, and I spend a great deal of time observing its uses in a wide variety of formats.

  That out of the way, I absolutely think you are right, we need these technologies to alter the delivery system. From my point of view most essentially in order to expand the possibility of student success beyond the socially-reproductive "typically successful." And I completely agree with your assessment of lectures. They should be the rare, wonderful, academic performances we can do wonderful things.

  My issue with clickers is that they are - as I have called them - an instant anachronism. They go into my filing system with the film-strip projector. The conversion of creative possibility (film in the 1960s school classroom) into a corporate profit source which robs the classroom of instructor initiative and student interaction.

  I've said repeatedly, here and elsewhere, that if you want to build a system of this sort, do it via the mobile phones students already carry. - If you want to start creating your quizzes now, for free, just go to http://www.mobilestudy.org/home/ -

  With the mobile phone you can thus do your multiple choice - if that's your pleasure, but students also have an effective way, in a mass lecture situation, of corresponding with you in different ways. Posting questions, giving significantly longer answers, sending you links. If need be an extra laptop-projector might be running a Twitter feed, or you could have a Google Doc up and running which people could build on, thus bringing this communication structure to the whole class in real time.

  Using mobiles (mobiles combined with laptops perhaps, the systems can interchange and mix), not just does everything that clickers can do, and much more. Not only offers interactivity impossible with the clicker. Not only saves dramatic amounts of student money (unlimited text messaging for the school year typically adds $50 to the phone bill and would get used for many other things). Not only builds better technology skills. But probably promotes and trains a better sense of how to use personal technology in social situations.

  It also offers a personalization capability which supports a wide range of students with differing abilities and "disabilities." Something clickers do not do at all.

  So I think if we have to have lectures. And if the live lecture course is better than the web-delivered lecture course (and it probably is in some ways and is not in others), then, absolutely, lets see how we can improve that with technology. I believe completely in the possibilities.

  But if we are to really do that we will not do it by embracing an already antiquated, classroom-only device with extremely limited interactive capabilities. And we will not do it by wasting money on single-function technologies. And we will not do it if the expectation is purely coercive ("it improves attendance" - of course, so would electronic monitoring ankle bracelets).

  Rather, we need to look to the capabilities of the world we live in, and the communication structures students are already comfortable with, and build on those.

• just to add...
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 23, 2008 at 10:15am EDT

• for Steve Ehrmann: The blog post I originally cited
  http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/02/instant-anachronism.html
  links to a number of research articles, both regarding clickers and regarding SMS systems in the classroom.

• Who says "multiple choice" = "single correct answer"?
• Posted by Christopher Heard , Associate Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University on June 23, 2008 at 10:30am EDT

• Alan Groveman writes, Clickers may, initially, engage students. However, there is a risk that using clickers can foster an epistemology predicated on achieving a correct answer rather than challenging a student’s schema and insisting on some modicum of inductive thinking. Critical thinking demands methodical and careful reasoning. Can clickers, often used with the goal of responding in a multiple choice format, successfully achieve this core educational objective? Frankly, these questions imply that Groveman lacks imagination in thinking through possible uses of clickers, or that he thinks the typical clicker-using professor lacks imagination. I have used clickers daily in classes of 35-50 for about the last year, and only once or twice--while students get used to operating the clickers themselves, or when a particular methodology yields a non-intuitive result--have I asked questions with objectively right and wrong answers. Most of the questions I present to students with clickers ask for their opinions; the multiple choices I offer represent the three or four items that I've encountered most commonly among prior students, and there's always a none of these option. After capturing the responses and showing students a pie chart breaking down the responses, I open up a discussion in which students explain or justify their responses. Some of my colleagues do the same in classes of 200-250 students. Our consistent experience has been that students are more willing to engage in discussion after the clicker poll than without the clicker poll. Another technique is to ask a multiple-choice question with a clear right-or-wrong answer and display the results without identifying the correct answer. Students then pair with each other and discuss the results for a couple of minutes; the professor then asks the same question again. I have not used this technique, but one of my colleagues does so regularly and reports that in the second poll, students almost always converge on the correct answer. Sure, we could achieve these same results by counting a show of hands, but the clickers are faster and we have found that some students who would not raise their hands at all will press a button on the clicker, while students who would raise their hands are no less likely to use the clicker. Clickers are no panacea, of course--no technology is--but I have found that using them allows me to conduct certain kinds of classroom activities faster and more efficiently.

• Posted by Alan Groveman on June 23, 2008 at 12:00pm EDT

• Oh my Chris - Ad homonym arguments don't add anything to the discussion. If course clickers can be used imaginatively. However, I believe that those who champion the use of clickers in the classroom often confuse the delivery system with the medication. The active ingredient in any successful implementation of clickers is the result of diligent teacher preparation, and the employment of empirically based pedagogical methods, rather than sole dependence on technology.

• the case for clickers in the classroom
• Posted by John on June 23, 2008 at 2:45pm EDT

• I have been using clickers for years to teach introductory physics to classes of about 60 students.

  I require students to read the textbook before class. How is that enforced? I give a simple one-question quiz at the beginning of each class. Students know this is coming, so they are much more likely to read the text.

  In addition, I ask conceptual questions in class, to give me feedback about whether or not the students are really "getting it". This tells me whether I need to back over the material or go on to the next topic.

  Of course, I could ask for a show of hands, but students are afraid to answer, for fear of being embarrassed. Clickers allow the students to answer ANONYMOUSLY, so they do participate.

  Faculty across campus report that students like the clickers, with only a couple of exceptions: some students complain that clickers "make me come to class, and make me read the textbook". Yeah, DUH! That's the whole point.

  Yes, clickers are only a tool, etc., etc., but the use of clickers allow me to interact with students in a large class, in ways that can't happen any other way.

  If you're looking for empirical support for the usefulness of clickers, there is plenty available. It's out there.

  I suspect that some of the faculty opposition to clickers really arises because (1) faculty weren't taught that way when they were students, and/or (2) faculty have been teaching without clickers for many years, so they naturally assume that classrooms without clickers must be the best way to teach.

• text messaging vs. clicker response
• Posted by Jennifer Allen-Barker , Diability Resource Center at CA Polytechnic State Uni. on June 23, 2008 at 4:30pm EDT

• I have read this discussion with great interest, as I am neiher a technology nor an instructional methodolgy expert. It is my job to assist students with disabilities access the educational programs with access equal to their non-disabled classroom peers. As such, I seek methods and technologies, that can help the instructor engage as many students with a variety of learning styles, as possible; and to help the student with disability access information and communicate their understanding of the material for assessment by the instructor. I have learned a great deal from this discussion today.

  Let me offer an item, for thought, to the discussion. While the majority of students are familiar with and do use text messaging as a means of communication, there are many who do not use it and/or cannot use it. That group might include: non-traditional, older students; students with visual impairment/blindness; students with decreased fine motor skills, and students with written communication challenges. The clicker option for these students, as a means for the instructor to gauge understanding or launch discussions, may be more functional and accessible than text messaging. For those instructional situations where posting questions, opinions or collaborative composition is desired, providing the student with the option of using their laptop, or verbal contribuion, as an alternative to text messaging, would need to be allowed, otherwise the use of a particular technology (text messaging through mobile phones) will exclude some students from full participation.

  In my opinion and experience, technology has opened doors for the non-typical student to achieve and succeed, but one technology does not serve all persons, anymore than one technology serves all instructional settings or purposes. Our challenge today, both exciting and daunting, is to keep abreast of the options in technologies, methodologies and techniques that have been developed, which can be selected and applied to the instructional process. Imagine if Steven Hawkins did not have, what is essentially a clicker, at his disposal!

• Posted by Frederica Shockley , Professor of Economics at Chico State University on June 23, 2008 at 5:05pm EDT

• I really don't see the analogy between me trying to teach introductory economics to undergraduates and a CEO soliciting the opinions of her board. I ask my students questions about the material that I just covered to determine if they understood the material. I do not solicit their opinions on how to steer the corporation.

  I ask multiple-choice questions, but I also ask a lot of numeric questions. If 25% or more do not answer correctly, I go over the material again. I don't go over as many chapters, but my students seldom ask me to slow down, and students are making more A's and B's. The questions and the students’ responses often become the catalyst for interesting class discussions.
  Clickers are an additional expense for students, but apparently many of my students think that the benefits outweigh the cost. In an end of the semester survey 70% said that they would prefer taking a class using clickers than a class not using clickers. About 30% of my students prefer a class without clickers because they have to attend class in order to get a good grade on their clicker responses. I do believe that California taxpayers who subsidize my students prefer that they attend class, and clickers are far cheaper than ankle bracelets.

  Yes, I do try to entertain my students, and believe me that is challenging when teaching microeconomics, but I think that students learn more when they enjoy the class.
  Clickers are a technology that allows me to ask my students questions about what we have covered and get the results immediately, not after I grade their exams. How can anyone fail to see the value?

• Students pay their money and take their choice
• Posted by LogicGuru , Professor on June 23, 2008 at 6:20pm EDT

• I teach at a private college. My students aren't subsidized by the taxpayer. If they want to come to class and participate to get their money's worth that's their business. If they want to waste their money and get lousy grades, that's their decision. I don't take the roll, I don't use clickers and I have no interest in locking on ankle bracelets: I'm a professor not a cop.

  We provide a resource--classroom teaching, individual help, advising, a good academic library, technology and all the facilities they need to learn and do well. If students are motivated, I'll give them everything they want--I'll talk to them, work with them as long as they want, see them on weekends, correspond with them by email, and do everything I can do to help them achieve their goals. If they're not motivated, I will not bully them, impose attendance requirements on them, or make any attempt to motivate them. They're adults and it's their decision.

  I'm not a cheerleader, a team-leader or a mommy. Students pay their money and take their choice.

• Reply to Professor LogicGuru
• Posted by Frederica Shockley , Professor of Economics at Chico State University on June 23, 2008 at 8:05pm EDT

• I agree with Professor LogicGuru at Private College when he or she says that he or she is not obligated to taxpayers. However, I am in a different situation, and I believe my expectation that students attend class is entirely reasonable. If you think requiring clickers is equivalent to “browbeating” my students, how do you explain the fact that 70% of them would prefer to take another class with clickers than without? Are 70% of my students masochistic?

• Pay your money & take your choice
• Posted by LogicGuru on June 23, 2008 at 9:30pm EDT

• Masochism isn't the issue, Shockley. At least 70% of my students would prefer not to got to college at all if they could get well-paying middle class jobs without it. That's not my business.

  I don't care what my student's want or what makes them feel good. They have a requirement to meet which, I believe, is legitimate. If they want their working papers they've got to satisfy that requirement. I'll do everything I can to help them but I will not do anything to motivate them. I do my job and they do theirs. They're grown-ups and make choices.

  Now suppose the taxpayers are supporting these students. If they choose not to do the work they fail. That's that. Then the taxpayers have no reason to support them. Case closed. Good jobs are scarce goods: if students choose to forgo them that's fine--it leaves those jobs open for those students who are willing to work to get their credentials.

• The Role of the Educational Technologist
• Posted by Rod Bell , Adjunct Professor at College of DuPage on June 23, 2008 at 11:10pm EDT

• In a robust IT-enhanced teaching environment, I imagine remote teaching teams for both K-12 and higher ed systems.

  In K-12, a team would include one or more knowledge specialists (generalists at the lower levels), a development expert, and an education technology expert. Higher ed teams would, again, include knowledge experts, an ed tech expert, and some sort of career counselor. These resource-rich teams would be cost-effective owing to higher student-teacher ratios.

  Ira Socol's comments are entirely consistent with my belief that the current IT environment can support a vast array of applications and will only continue to produce ever more capabilities. If educational institutions will invest in these key supporting roles, particularly educational IT consultants, such teaching teams will be able to discover and implement technologies in cost-effective service of their pedagogical strategies.

• Happy to Cheerlead
• Posted by Ellis Godard , Assistant Professor at CSUN on June 24, 2008 at 5:35am EDT

• I pity the students of LogicGuru, who doesn't care what they want and "will not do anything to motivate them". Like it or not, teaching is a performance; if you weed out all that's entertaining and motivating, you might be left with some incredibly dry (dare I say, boring) presentations. You can discount their reactions as not your business - but if your business is teaching, you might consider whether they'd learn more, more readily, and more permanently if they were motivated. And if you think all of the motivation is to come from the material itself, regardless of performance elements, that alone may explain why 70% of your students don't want to come. I probably wouldn't either.

• Pedagogy Before Technology
• Posted by Derek Bruff on June 24, 2008 at 10:40am EDT

• Alan Groveman wrote in a comment above, "The active ingredient in any successful implementation of clickers is the result of diligent teacher preparation, and the employment of empirically based pedagogical methods, rather than sole dependence on technology." I agree with this statement, but I can't seem to understand why Groveman seems to be against the use of clickers as classroom response systems.

  Groveman says he uses the University of Washington's Classroom Presenter program, which is itself a classroom response system, albeit one that allows students to submit not only answers to multiple-choice questions but also responses to free-response questions and anything else they can construct using a tablet PC. The basic use of these systems is the same--having students respond to questions or complete tasks independently or in small groups and share their perspectives with the instructor and the rest of the class.

  Does Groveman believe that there is more empirical evidence that the Classroom Presenter system better facilitates student learning? Because there is certainly empirical evidence that clickers, when used to engage students in small-group and class-wide discussions, promote learning. See the literature reviews in in my clickers bibliography. Those reviews argue that the technology itself does not improve student learning, but that the technology helps facilitate teaching methods that are shown to be effective at promoting student learning. That seems consistent with Groveman's point.

  Does Groveman see the multiple-choice format commonly, but not exclusively used, with clickers as too limiting? He seems to think that faculty voting on a tenure case would laugh at the idea of using clickers to do so. But such cases do come down to votes, don't they? Votes that occur after much discussion and critical evaluation. Multiple-choice clicker questions can be used in the same way--to provide all students in a class with a decision to make, a decision that might require critical thinking and evaluation. Several of those who have left comments here have described such uses. The multiple-choice format does limit the use of clickers in some areas (brainstorming, for instance), but it can be used very effectively to promote critical thinking.

  It seems clear that Groveman believes there are many who are pushing clicker technology without attention paid to teaching methods that make the most of it. I guess I've met some people like that, but most people, especially faculty members, I hear saying great things about clickers do so because of the ways clickers enable them to be more effective teachers. Take Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur, who has helped popularize clickers in the sciences. When he talks about clickers, he talks about their use in facilitating peer instruction--a teaching method that has been shown to be effective in promoting student learning.

  I agree that when using clickers and when encouraging others to use them, one should focus on the pedagogy first and the technology second. But classroom response systems allow instructors, particularly those in large classes, to teach in ways that can be very difficult to do so without some kind of response system technology. Clickers enable instructors to ask every single one of their students to respond to a question independently, without waiting to hear what their peers say before thinking about it. Not only that, but they provide a mechanism for reporting those responses to the instructor, allowing the instructor to be more responsive to the students' learning, and to the students, allowing them to know what their peers think about a particular question or issue. Having students raise their hands doesn't allow them to respond independently, and having them submit written responses doesn't provide immediate feedback about all students' learning. When used to engage students in interesting and useful questions and to practice "agile teaching" by using the results of clicker questions to respond to student learning needs, clickers are very effective tools for teaching. Plus, students like them when used in these ways! Groveman says he's a "strong supporter of using technology to enhance pedagogy." It seems to me that clickers are a great example of such technologies.

• re: Clickers
• Posted by Peter C. Herman , Professor at SDSU on June 24, 2008 at 11:35am EDT

• One should also bear in mind that "clickers," also know as "classroom response systems," are going to be more appropriate for certain subjects and more inappropriate for others. Professor Bruff is a mathematician, and from my admittedly anumerical perspective, math is going to be more amenable to this technology than my own subject--English literature. Close reading a text, or providing context for a text, just does not lend itself to multiple choice questions.

  I would also pay more attention to Groveman's statement that "Often, the technology become the handmaiden of an administration bent on sustaining huge classes where students need opera glasses to see the instructor." That is certainly my experience.

• clicker complexity
• Posted by Peg Wherry on June 24, 2008 at 12:50pm EDT

• My husband retired before clickers were widely available, but he always wanted to have a tool like that in his large general psych classes. He knew that in any class of 200-300 students, there were several who were victims of child abuse, but he couldn't very well ask for a show of hands. With clickers, he could get numbers that might make a pretty powerful point. (And he could even, with some questions, begin to teach a little data analysis with the results.)

  A current colleague who teaches biology at a large public university wishes she could know from the start how many of her students believe in creationism or intelligent design--a show of hands on that isn't going to be any more useful than a show of hands on child abuse. Anonymity can play a powerful role in both identifying underlying assumptions and in demonstrating how common or rare certain traits and experiences are in a large group.

  As for the person who says clickers could not be used in a literature class . . . thirty years ago one of my fellow English TAs composed a brief multiple choice quiz on a particular short story in which every answer to a given question could be . . . if not "correct," in the conventional sense, certainly a plausible interpretation. And I once heard a historian defend a sort of "higher order" multiple choice exam, with questions like, "Which of the following was not a cause of World War I?"

  Good teaching is good teaching, regardless of class size or tools available. But some tools let you do different things or even the same things in more productive ways.

• Clickers in the Humanities
• Posted by Derek Bruff on June 24, 2008 at 2:15pm EDT

• While it's true that more faculty in the natural and social sciences use clickers than faculty in the humanities, that doesn't mean clickers are any less effective in the humanities. As Peg points out, one can ask multiple-choice, critical-thinking questions in the humanities that do not have single correct answers. Although multiple-choice questions on quizzes and tests usually have single correct answers for evaluation purposes, multiple-choice questions asked via clickers can have multiple defensible answers. This can be particularly useful when those clicker questions are followed by small-group or class-wide discussions in which the reasons for and against each of the answer choices are explored.

• re: Clickers, cont'd
• Posted by Peter C. Herman , Professor at SDSU on June 24, 2008 at 2:15pm EDT

• While I have no doubt that clickers have some uses, answering a multiple choice question, however artfully constructed, is not the same as writing an essay that argues a point using evidence, preferably, primary source evidence. And while one could argue that the two methods are not mutually exclusive (as indeed they are not), yet in practice clickers are often used as an excuse for not reducing class sizes to the point where essays are a practical option. That is my primary objection to their use.

• Posted by Derek Bruff on June 24, 2008 at 4:00pm EDT

• Peter, you make a good point that responding to and discussing a clicker question during class is not the same thing as writing a thoughtful essay. Is it safe to say, however, that in humanities classes, most essay writing takes place outside of class? If so, then clickers provide a useful way to structure in-class conversations without displacing time spent writing.

  Also, I haven't really heard from anyone, faculty or administrator, who's said, "Great! Now that we have clickers, we can have larger classes!" I more frequently here, "Wow, this is a large class I've been given. What can I do to engage these students?" I can't speak for all campuses, but the ones I've visited seem to see clickers as a possible solution to an existing problem.

• but the questions are...
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 24, 2008 at 4:40pm EDT

• Derek (et al):

  There is certainly evidence that huge lecture classes for freshmen and sophomores have certain advantages with clickers than the equivalent classes without. But two questions arise from this finding:

  First, is this a solution which perpetuates a bad system? That is, not has it increased class sizes, but has it provided an excuse not to decrease class sizes? It is important to separate the concept of "not as bad" from the concept of "best practice."

  Second, is this the best technology to accomplish this task? Is it the most cost-effective? the most engaging? the most flexible? Does it contribute to a valuable skill set our students might be learning?

  What I have seen in the "pro" comments here makes me wonder how positively awful these courses were pre-clickers. Apparently there was no feedback, no engagement, and no assessment of student response at all. If that was the case, marginal improvement seems an unfortunate target. But even if this represents a massive improvement, I have seen nothing which defends this specific, expensive, publisher controlled technology.

• Questions for Ira Socol
• Posted by Frederica , Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico on June 24, 2008 at 9:00pm EDT

• Why do you say that clickers are "publisher controlled?" I can select any text that I like to use with my einstruction clickers.

  Why do you consider clickers to be “expensive?” Granted, that is a subjective term. My students pay $22 for their clickers, which include our bookstore’s standard 37% mark up. Then they pay $15 each semester that they use them. In my end of the semester survey 70% of my students said that they would rather take another class with clickers than without. This implies that 70% think that the benefits outweigh the cost.

  I have never heard of a single case at Chico where clickers were used to argue for increasing class size or against reducing class size.

• Answers for Dr. Shockley
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 24, 2008 at 10:00pm EDT

• Dr. Shockley says, "My students pay $22 for their clickers, which include our bookstore’s standard 37% mark up. Then they pay $15 each semester that they use them."

  Let's consider that. First, if these clickers are not controlled by someone other than yourself and the students, who are they paying $15 per semester to? (and, is it $15 per semester? or $15 per course?) I ask because, with the number of responses typically required in a semester (reading the research), about $5.00 would cover the total costs per semester of adding these messages to the most expensive SMS mobile phone plan.

  So, if 1/4 of your university's undergrads are buying clickers each year, and 1/4 of your university's undergrads are paying your $15 fee each semester, Chico State is investing over $200,000 per year - over the cost of using SMS systems on the phones your students already own - into just this hardware.

  $200,000 is, I'm sure, nothing to you - but it is still the cost of two or three well paid adjuncts, who might teach 6 or 9 classes (which might shrink the size of a couple of your enormous section sizes). Or it could buy hundreds of phones to lend to unequipped students in need and equip a hundred campus computers with state of the art accessibility software. Or... well, I'm sure I could spend it on better things. I'm sure you could spend it on better things.

  Again, you are insisting that this system "is better." If you cannot motivate, involve, and engage in other ways, then, as I've said, I'm not arguing tat point. But I'd like you to consider whether this is the best your university can do for its students. I think that is the measuring system we should be using.

• reL Clickers and Large Classes
• Posted by Peter C. Herman , Professor at SDSU on June 25, 2008 at 7:00am EDT

• Frederica, economics professor at CSU Chico, writes: "I have never heard of a single case at Chico where clickers were used to argue for increasing class size or against reducing class size."

  The assumption at SDSU is that clickers will make huge classes more palatable. For example, if you go to the clicker support webpage at SDSU(http://clicker.sdsu.edu/index.html), you will find the following: "SDSU has had a permanently installed OptionPower radio frequency (RF) response system in ENS 280, SDSU's first 500-seat classroom, since it opened in 2003" (http://clicker.sdsu.edu/clicker_intro.html). It is no accident that clicker technology was first installed in a huge classroom, not in a seminar room, not in a room for 45 students. Furthermore, while the rhetoric surrounding clickers states that the purpose is to enable learning, it is significant that no other avenues have been explored, like lowering class sizes.

  As for the cost, here is what the SDSU site says: "The software and hardware required for faculty are provided free of charge. Students purchase the clicker in the bookstore. The clickers cost $35 for one semester usage, or $49 for unlimited usage. One-semester clickers can be upgraded in later semesters to lifetime status for $15.50. The bookstore will buy clickers back from students for a small amount (around $5). Once enough used clickers are available, they will be resold for about $10 less than the new clickers" (same URL as above).

• Reply to Ira Socol
• Posted by Frederica , Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico on June 25, 2008 at 8:50am EDT

• The $15 per semester goes to the firm that designed the clickers, provides technical suppor, and engages in ongoing development. The clickers that I use do not cost my university a single penny. They didn’t need to install any equipment, and my students can use the clickers in any classroom that has a connected computer. My university provides no on-campus technical support for either me or my students. If I never used another clicker, my university would not have any additional revenue.

  When I ask my students questions, I get an immediate summary of their answers. I give them 1 point for a correct answer and 2 points for an incorrect answer. At the end of class the einstruction software provides me with a spreadsheet, showing each student’s score based upon 100 points. It also uploads a study guide to each student’s account. The study guide lists the questions, the answers, the correct answer and the student’s answer. Do you have software that will do these tasks with a cell phone?

  I use clickers to determine if students understand the concepts that I go over in class. For example, I use a multiple-choice question to determine if my students understand the difference between a change in the function and a movement along the function, a key to understanding demand and supply. This is a difficult concept for many of my students who do not have a strong quantitative background. Typically, most of the students answer incorrectly the first time I ask this type of question. Last spring I told my students that we needed to go over this concept again because many do not understand the difference between a change in demand and a movement along the demand curve. One student responded, “But I thought that I understood it!” Clickers inform my students as well as me about what they don’t understand.

  Many students also find it difficult to calculate opportunity cost of production which is necessary in order to understand comparative advantage and trade. This semester I gave them a typical opportunity cost problem after I had covered the concept in class. Most of them missed the problem, and I went over the problem before giving them another similar question. Most of them answered the second problem correctly.

  I discovered this semester that I can use clickers to teach students how to read graphs. I present a graph and ask a question which requires them to read it. For example, I might ask, “What is the value of marginal cost when quantity equals 10?” By repeating similar questions with different graphs throughout the semester, many of my students learn to read graphs.

  It would be complicated to place a value on what they learned as a result of using clickers, but apparently 70% of my students think that the benefits outweigh the cost.

• Response to Ira Socol
• Posted by Derek Bruff on June 25, 2008 at 10:05am EDT

• If I'm following Ira's arguments here and on his blog accurately, it seems his major concern is the spending of so much money (by students or by institutions) on a technology that he describes as an "instant anachronism," arguing that classroom response systems that use the text-messaging capabilities of student cell phones (a) are more cost efficient since students already have cell phones and text-messaging plans are cheap and (b) can be used for more authentic learning given the free-response capabilities of text-messaging-based systems.

  Regarding the cost factors, at most campuses, students pay between $25 and $60 for clickers. Many campuses have adopted single systems for use across campus, so a student need only purchase a single clicker for use in multiple courses. As far as instructional aids that students purchase in bookstores go, clickers are less than half the price of the average graphing calculator or textbook, resources that have more limited re-use between courses. (Engineering students will get a lot of mileage out of their calculators, of course, but the English student who purchases one for a single semester of calculus will not.) Given these costs, should we stop having students purchase graphing calculators or textbooks, particularly since there are free Web applications that replicate the functions of graphing calculators and Wikipedia can function as a reasonable textbook for many introductory courses?

  Maybe, but that's a pretty radical step. I see in Ira's comments a call to revolutionize higher education, and getting rid of textbooks would take a revolution of some kind, I think. I would argue in favor of sustained, incremental change, however. Yes, it would be great if we could leverage students' existing text-messaging capable cell phones as classroom responses systems. However, the technologies for doing so are just being developed and made available in the United States. See for instance the company Poll Everywhere, which allows audience members and students to respond to polls using text-messaging. See also the iPhone applications being developed at Abilene Christian University to allow their students to use the iPhones that all of their first-year students will receive this fall as part of classroom response systems. These are exciting developments, and the prospect of having tools like these to use in the classroom is exciting.

  However, I see a couple of problems with trying to encourage faculty to use these text-messaging-based tools. Never mind the technological and logistical challenges for a moment (not all students have cell phones, not all students have text-messaging plans, not all classrooms have adequate cellular coverage, etc.), what about the challenge involved for a faculty member interested in using these systems? It's taken the clicker vendors a few years to get their programs to the point where they are fairly easy to use and work reliably. Newer, text-messaging-based systems will probably take a while, too, before they're easy enough to use that more than just early adopters will use them. (I haven't used Poll Everywhere, so I don't know how easy it is to use. They've just this week added the ability to identify student responses, a key ingredient in classroom use, given how many faculty find the accountability that clickers provide essential to their use.)

  The other challenge is that aggregating, analyzing, and responding to student answers to free-response questions during class is not easy. With multiple-choice questions, the bar chart gives faculty an easy-to-use summary of student responses. What kinds of tools will help faculty make sense of student responses that are numbers, words, phrases, sentences or paragraphs? Until these tools are invented, developed, and refined (as the people at Abilene are doing right now), the use of free-response questions in the classroom are likely to be limited, particularly in large classes.

  One of the great things about clickers is that they allow a faculty member who's very comfortable delivering a lecture to add an interactive element for engaging and assessing students to those lectures without much trouble. Sure, a radical transformation of pedagogy in higher education might be great (maybe), but how about small, useful changes with high returns on investments of instructor time that can happen right now?

• Responses
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 25, 2008 at 11:30am EDT

• Dr. Shockley continues an either/or choice - a fallacy. She persists in saying that there is only one system she knows of which will successfully engage students - and that 70% of her students prefer some form of engagement to none. While both these facts are certainly true, perhaps these facts also indicate a lack of interest on the part of her university in pursuing, and discussing, best practices.

  Do equivalent SMS systems exist? Yes, as Dr. Bruff outlines. Many such systems do - including MobileStudy which I mentioned earlier. Are they marketed as aggressively as the Clicker Systems? No. Do these systems come with canned classroom questions? Usually not. They are often open source, and often free or very inexpensive. Could universities invest energies in supporting this kind of development (the way primary and secondary teachers in the UK contribute to Interactive White Board resources)? Yes. Might those be similar to the energies needed to make Clicker systems work consistently? Perhaps.

  Do some students lack mobile phones? Of course. If you didn't force them to buy clickers would any students have clickers? No, none would. Do some classrooms block perfect mobile coverage? Yes. Before the universities began promoting clickers were any university classrooms set up for their use? No, none were.

  In other words, a decision has been made to invest in a less interactive technology with far more limitations and far less future potential, rather than a technology with more possibilities. It is a decision. It is a choice.

  Dr. Bruff suggests this choice is driven by incrementalism. A belief that we, as people in this structure of higher education, are incapable of radical change. He is probably right about that. Education - devoted as it is to social reproduction - is not a place filled with people who believe in radical change, or have the motivations to pursue that change.

  But even with a view toward incrementalism, vast inefficiencies seem a negative. One of the knocks on technology in education has consistently been the high costs of constantly updating technologies and the high costs of constant retraining. If that is true, one essential solution is looking ahead, and not investing heavily in things that are destined to outdate themselves almost immediately.

• Reply to Ira Socol
• Posted by Frederica , Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico on June 25, 2008 at 1:35pm EDT

• You obviously know a lot more about classroom technology than I do. If you have something that will do the same job as the clickers I use for less cost, I will be happy to consider it. I do not need content; I develop my own.

• Phones as Clickers - a Vendor View
• Posted by Jeff Vyduna , Cofounder at Poll Everywhere on June 25, 2008 at 1:40pm EDT

• This is a great discussion. I want to outline our views from the perspective of a company who is trying to cut the cost of clickers by 10X. We’re already convinced of their pedagogical value, especially as the average mobile device starts to deliver a richer experience.

  Mobile Phones as Clickers

  SMS is ubiquitous on mobile phones, and works in extremely low signal areas (it is much more reliable and resilient than voice). Our tests of between 30 – 1000 replies show that response speed is quite acceptable to instructors, and a sent messages has never been dropped. But SMS costs money (addressed below), and there are valid concerns of accessibility that have been discussed in this thread. Our view (and that of Eric Mazur’s group at Harvard) is that the best solution is a flexible hybrid: Laptops, smartphones, dumbphones, and as a last resort, $30-$60 clickers.

  Cost

  Poll Everywhere is free for sections of less than 30 students and any K-12 Title I public school who has not made AYP. Our larger plans are not free so that we can dedicate our lives to this problem and also provide quality support. High quality on-demand support is one of open source’s challenges.

  Our pricing comes out to $1.25 per student per semester, contrasted with the market prices for clickers that Frederica and Ira have provided. SMS messaging fees can be up to $.20 per message, but a surprisingly high percentage of Higher Ed students have text messaging plans that make the effective price $0.01 per message. The cost of SMS is a temporary weakness for two reasons: 1) US Carriers will soon follow Europe and Asia’s lead with FTEU SMS – “Free To End User”, making Poll Everywhere SMS responses free to students. 2) The rise of iPhones and web enabled smartphones has prompted us to create Poll4.com, which enables free SMS-like responses.

  Who Should Pay

  The “student pays for clickers” paradigm grew from one primary driver: device care and accountability. Harvard’s Graduate School of Education is using clickers this week for professional development workshops. By Monday end of day, 19 out of 100 clickers “walked off” accidentally in the pockets and purses of participants.

  Derek and I have had the “analogies” discussion before. Graphing calculators maintain utility outside the classroom, as do textbooks (even given that the modern textbook publishing system is idiosyncratic and vexing). Therefore, a student may reasonably be asked to purchase those learning technologies. But imagine the absurdity of asking a student to pay a direct surcharge for taking a class that utilizes a digital projector or Scantron grading – it doesn’t make sense. Almost all students already own a phone.

  Ease of Use and the Future

  SMS and other cell phone methods will be simpler than clickers. Why? There are be no batteries for schools to replace. Students have positive confirmation and a record of what they submitted. Students don’t have to register their device online. Instructors can use SMS slides in PowerPoint that don’t require installing an add-in. By the end of this summer, we’ll support single-keypress responses.

  Looking to the future, online clicker content communities will probably start to succeed, and potentially surpass publisher models (it’s an easier nut to crack than textbooks). Opt-in “anonymized” benchmarking could allow instructors to compare a part of their teaching efficacy to peer averages. As tired as appending this suffix is, I might dare call it Clickers2.0. Derek: We’ll be there ASAP. We’re passionate, growing, and sleeping very little (:

• Reply to Jeff Vyduna
• Posted by Frederica , Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico on June 25, 2008 at 8:20pm EDT

• I'd be interested in taking a look at Poll Everywhere, but I don't want to get into another beta test with a poorly designed clicker:

  http://media.www.theorion.com/media/storage/paper889/news/2007/12/12/Opinion/Commentary.Turningpoint.Clickers-3142103.shtml

  Unfortunately, I am the only prof here at Chico who has used both TurningPoint (1 semester) & einstruction (2 semesters), but there are plenty of profs who have had problems with Turning. When I used Turning, I spent hours every week with on-campus tech support trying to make them work. Neither I nor my students need on-campus tech support with einstruction.

• Question for Jeff Vyduna
• Posted by John B. on June 27, 2008 at 5:15am EDT

• Your service requires a communication device and the device's monthly service plan, e.g. cell phones, smartphones, iPhones, correct? These devices and services are not free. The total cost to the student should include these charges. Does your service work with any cell phone service, e.g. will it work with AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, etc. or do all students have to subscribe to the same service? How do you stop students from using these communication devices to cheat? How does your service work in classrooms where there is no cell phone reception? When the cell phones are turned on to answer questions, aren't they then able to receive phone calls so that it is likely that class will be constantly interrupted by incoming cell phone calls? How do you keep students focused on the lecture when they are using their texting devices to message their friends during class?

• My last comment
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 27, 2008 at 8:45am EDT

• John B. should get out into the world and try text-messaging. Of course all systems work together - world-wide. And of course you can text from any phone with a plan or free from any computer using text-message features found on phone provider websites, or through Gmail add-ons, or through the Poll-Anywhere web link.

  And as Jeff has said, texting works virtually everywhere, usually unless it is actively blocked.

  But what is most important about what John B. is saying is what he offering (besides continued profits for his company): Control rather than possibility, and coercion rather than teaching.

  Any instructor who has taught with mobile devices knows that "inappropriate" uses tend to vanish (or diminish greatly) when the device is out in front of the student and is being used as part of the classroom experience. We also know that we contribute to the future lifeskills of our students when we actively teach appropriate technology use, rather than artificially banning the tools these students will use everywhere they go - and everywhere they learn - outside of our classrooms.

  I don't mind John B. arguing hard to protect his job. That's logical. But I do mind universities treating their students as untrustable infants, and I mind universities refusing to engage with the essential information and communication technologies of our times. Neither will help students move successfully into the future.

• Back to you, Ira.
• Posted by John B. on June 27, 2008 at 5:40pm EDT

• Ira, you make a lot of assumptions that need to be challenged. For starters, I am in the real-world of the classroom. From your comments, I cannot tell if you are an instructor or a student and/or a representative of an SMS company. I have been a student, an educator, and an engineer. I work closely with hundreds of professors, many schools, and several education non-profits.

  Cell phones have been around much longer than RF clickers so if they were capable of providing the solution provided by clickers, it would have happened a long time ago. Clickers have naturally proliferated in higher ed because they provide a complete solution to real-world problems without introducing other problems such as students using their communications devices during class/exams, new cheating opportunities, reception/transmission problems, and the high cost of hardware and service plans required by SMS technology. If you are a professor, can you honestly say that you want to encourage your students to turn on their communication devices during class? By doing so, you increase the probability that your class will be interrupted by incoming calls, students will be distracted by incoming text messages, etc. When you use a communication device to collect response, you can no longer use it for formative assessment because students can easily text a question to the smart kid in the class or the brainiac at the library. Intermittent or poor reception for cell phones is not a trivial problem, especially if you are using these devices for high stakes assessment. The total cost for your SMS technology is much greater than a clicker because you have to purchase a cell phone + service plan, you have to have a text-message device + service plan, or you have to have a computer + ISP service.

  Blocking technology is implemented precisely because educators do not want these communication devices on in their classroom, but some will argue that blocking technology should not be used because these devices are necessary in case of emergencies.

  My generating profit for my company is a red herring. You do not know why I am doing this and you do not know my financial situation. I could just as easily be doing this because I want to help improve education and increase learning in the classroom and I believe clickers are the best and most inexpensive technology solution to accomplish this. If you think people like Jeff Vyduna aren't in business to make money, then you need to get out to the real world.

  You don't see that asking students not to use their cell phones and texting devices for inappropriate communications is a form of control? If you think inappropriate uses of mobile devices tend to vanish with a polite request, then I would venture to say that you are living in make-believe land.

  I think you do mind me "arguing hard to protect my job," which by the way is another red herring. You are advocating a technology that creates a myriad of problems in the classroom, that is not honest about the total cost to the students, is not practical or reliable in many locations, has limited applications, etc. And, why the hostility toward business as if that contains a de facto assumption of nefarious motivation? Aren't universities preparing all students for a life in one form of business or another?

  You stated in an earlier post that the technology you are touting has more possibilities and clickers have far less potential, but you decline to make the case. We have software that can be loaded onto a laptop or a PDA and even though it is much less expensive than a clicker, it is very rarely purchased. No one has ever purchased a license from me. So, before you go investing in your SMS companies, I would do a little market research.

  In an even earlier post, you make many incorrect assumptions about the cost of clickers (overstating costs) and SMS devices (understating costs), then extrapolate to the absurd. I guarantee that you have never heard that clickers cost $15 per course so you are clearly being disingenuous and purposefully misleading. Clickers cost between $35-$60 total depending on the functionality of the brand. Cell phones on the other hand cost $50-$500 for the hardware and $40-$120 per month for the calling plan. Now, extrapolate that on your fictitious demand curve and see what kind of money is being made and by whom.

  In a still earlier post, you imply that clickers help perpetuate a system that is increasing class sizes. Large class sizes and online classes are here to stay and are not caused by clicker technology. Universities are implementing larger class sizes because they are more profitable. You are not going to fix that problem by deriding the one tool that is helping make unmanageable class sizes manageable. Don't shoot the solution provider.

  You ask, "Is this the best technology to accomplish this task? Is it the most cost-effective? The most engaging? The most flexible?" Answers - Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Clickers have naturally proliferated precisely because they are the best solution. As I said above, since cell phones have been around a lot longer than clickers, if cell phones provided the best solution (since they are more profitable), they would be the most widely used technology.

  You state, "What I have seen in the 'pro' comments here makes me wonder how positively awful these courses were pre-clickers. Apparently there was no feedback, no engagement, and no assessment of student response at all." Here is another possibility. Many of these classes had feedback, had engagement, and had assessment of student responses, but clickers enhanced all of these characteristics so much so that typically 70-85% of students using clickers (and these are not trivial percentages) would say that given the same teacher and same course, "I would prefer to take it with clickers than without." That is a hell of a testimony!

• Yes
• Posted by Ira Socol at Michigan State University on June 27, 2008 at 9:25pm EDT

• Yes, I advocate students using their mobiles in the classroom.
  http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2007/12/dont-hang-up-on-your-students-futures.html

  Yes, others do as well. Many, many others, in educational institutions of every type, worldwide.
  https://www.cs.tcd.ie/crite/publications/sources/Lisboa-04-TxtingPaper.rtf
  http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1281393
  http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1579235
  http://www.science.donntu.edu.ua/konf/konf7/o138.pdf
  http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/handhelds_handbook.pdf
  http://www.wlecentre.ac.uk/cms/files/occasionalpapers/mobilelearning_pachler2007.pdf

  There are those of us who firmly believe in opening possibilities, and helping students discover how to navigate today's (actual) technology.

  And, John B: if your Google skills were up to date you'd know exactly where I stand regarding your efforts to stop cheating...
  http://insidehighered.com/views/2006/05/25/socol

• Yes, Ira
• Posted by John B. on June 28, 2008 at 7:00am EDT

• Ira, I do applaud your fervor to improve education and I do believe there is a place for mobiles in education, but I do not believe it will be in the way you envision.

  You want to push the technology in a direction that people do not widely accept. Educators with practical experience in the classroom have good reasons not to go in that direction.

  Based on my classroom experience, I believe mobiles in the classroom cause too many problems and distractions, which you will not eliminate without the kind of extreme control you abhor. That is why educators have tried to ban mobiles from their classrooms or block their signals.

  I believe students are naturally finding the best uses of mobile technology to guide their own learning. In this respect, they do not need us to tell them what to do or what to learn.

  Clickers are a technological solution to an academic need. Several clicker companies including the one that I represent, were founded by professors.

  If you are concerned with unreasonable costs in education, why don't you promote technologies that will lower the cost of textbooks? (In case you have written about that too, I do know how to use Google, but do not have time to thoroughly study the backgrounds of everyone who contributes to these posts. I have another life.)

  eTAP.org has developed an online interactive multimedia textbook for K12 that has produced amazing results in continuations schools. They provide it to schools for $10 per student in quantities of 1,000.

• Posted by Trish on July 16, 2008 at 7:00pm EDT

• Welcome to the off-falls of No Child Left Behind. When we spend 12 years teaching children how to give the correct answer to a test, and we don't teach them logic, critical thinking or problem solving, then they will enter college without the ability to engage in a meaningful discussion or debate. They will ONLY be prepared to click on the correct answer. Then the creators of the brilliant No Child Left Behind Act can begin to evaluate the merits of individual institutions based on their students clicking ability.
  Sound nutty, don't be shocked when it happens.

• Posted by Brian on March 15, 2010 at 12:45pm EDT

• The response by Phil Hultin , Professor of Chemistry at University of Manitoba on June 20, 2008 at 5:30pm EDT is the most reasonable of all of them. He hit sit right on; clickers are just another tool in a teacher's toolbox. Success or failure with it depends on the user of the tool. Unfortunately, many teachers have not updated any of the tools in their toolbox and have not exposed students to other forms of "real-world" technology. That is where the real problems are, imho. As one educator said to me recently, "You have every right to live in a cave...but you have no right to keep all your students right there with you."