Mixed reaction for devices designed to encourage class participation

Large lecture halls are usually the classes students feel the most comfortable skipping, but some students say since the incorporation of clickers into their lectures’ curricula, they can’t ditch any more.

Clickers are remotes used by some professors to track attendance and encourage student participation in classes too large to foster discussion, such as science classes. When they were introduced years ago, the goal was to increase student attendance and participation, and students who use them say the devices do just that —  whether they like it or not.

“Half the time, they don’t work,” sophomore Valerie Redmond said about clicker use in her plant biology class this semester. “Our teacher can’t figure it out.”

Redmond did note, however, that when a class requires clickers, she and her friends are less likely to skip it.

For about five years, many university faculty members have required their students to purchase clickers and register them to a specific channel, enabling them to reply individually to questions posed to the entire class. A small portable receiving device, managed by the class instructor, collects student feedback. The clicker software, TurningPoint, also displays data through charts, graphs and polls.

Though the clickers have become an established tool at this university, many students are still not sold on the technology.

Sophomore Allison Gost, who is using a clicker for her introductory biology class this semester, said the technology has often proved useful for in-class quizzes, but said it also has major faults.

“The grading is weird because you can’t automatically see the answers,” Gost said. “It’s kind of hard to grasp the concepts.”

Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence Spencer Benson said though clicker use is mostly beneficial, there are always drawbacks to relying on technology.

“The downfall of having technology is that for complex reasons it sometimes doesn’t work,” Benson said. “Sometimes the electricity goes out. It’s not a limitation, just the reality.”

Office of Information Technology spokeswoman Phyllis Johnson said the university’s wireless network features 3,700 access points across the campus, making it one of the largest networks in the country. Although some areas tend to experience spotty clicker reception, she said, the university is continuing to expand reception areas.

Benson said clickers greatly increase student classroom involvement by giving students the opportunity to respond anonymously to controversial or sensitive questions that the professor might want to ask.

Biology professor Jeffrey Jensen said he integrated clicker technology during some lectures to disprove scientific misconceptions held by his students and invite discussion amongst themselves.

“The emphasis in scientific teaching is to define measurable goals, and to assess whether we and the students are actually meeting them. Clickers are useful for this,” said Jensen. “Occasionally students will nail a concept that I think they’ll have trouble understanding, other times they’ll tank on a question I thought was too easy.”

Physics professor Edward Redish agreed, saying students in his introductory physical sciences lecture become animated and talkative during clicker sessions — especially when there is a split vote on a question.

“To a real extent, in science, learning to talk the talk is learning to walk the walk,” Redish said. “Clickers allow me to bring these kinds of discussions even into a large lecture and shift the class towards deeper learning.”

Although Redish said overall his students don’t seem to like using the clickers, he still uses them, albeit sparingly.

Some, like junior American studies major Nateara Gaston prefer old-fashioned methods to clicker use.

“For tests, I just prefer to bubble in a circle on paper,” said Gaston, who took many of her business management tests last fall with clickers. “[With clickers] you do get your test grades sooner than average, but I’ve never been the one to want my test grades so quickly.”

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