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Highlighted Projects

Clickers (Personal Response Systems)

Clickers are devices that look like remote controls and allow all the students to respond to a question at the same time. Usually the questions are multiple-choice questions, but they also can be numeric answers. Graphical images can also be incorporated into questions. Software quickly summarizes the responses and shows the number of students who selected each answer choice. This summary can be displayed as a bar chart to the entire class.

Use
Faculty use the personal response systems, or clickers, in large or content-heavy courses to poll the students on their understanding of concepts before deciding whether to move on to the next topic. For smaller courses, the clickers are being used to engage students in debates, or to get immediate feedback on their opinions of readings.

The clickers can be integrated with Microsoft Power Point or used with customized software to develop questions. The clickers can be set up to be anonymous to the faculty member or linked to a particular student, enabling tracking each student’s progress.

Collaborators
Several members of the Biology Department (Patsy Dickinson, Barry Logan, Hadley Horch, Lindsay Whitlow, Pam Bryer, Mike Palopoli, Anne McBride)
Scott Sehon, Philosophy Department
Paul Schaffner, Psychology
Thomas Baumgarte, Steve Naculich, & Karen Topp, Physics

Contribution
The clickers replace pen and paper polling that was done in some classes, saving the instructor time and providing more immediate feedback. For larger classes the clickers have to potential for more student participation and engagement, along with giving the instructor a better sense of the students' level of understanding.

For more insight, visit the Teaching with Clickers site at Harvard, where Professor Eric Mazur, the founder of using Clickers in higher education, explains how he uses clickers in his physics classes.

Technologies
Infrared personal response pads (clickers)
Infrared receiver
Software that integrates the questions, data collection, and display (Classroom Performance System)

Contact
Tina Finneran, Education and Research Consulting