It is a common sight in classes all over Ohio State: a lecture hall crammed with hundreds of students in various states of interest and wakefulness.
A growing technology trend is being used to combat the snores of bored students and pique their interest. Clickers, a nickname for a type of audience response system, are handheld devices that record responses by communicating with a receiver through radio waves.
Bill Reay, a professor emeritus of physics, thinks that with a clicker in every student’s hand, lectures can become more effective at the touch of a button.
“Lectures are singularly ineffective. They’re just not a good way to teach,” Reay said. “Picture the Ohio State football team going to a lecture about how to beat Michigan and then going to play Michigan without ever practicing.”
Reay said he thinks it’s important for students to actually do things in lecture.
“Sitting there is not only a bad learning experience; it’s boring,” he said.
Reay, who said about 20 percent of the physics department has used clickers, said he used them to find out how well his students understood concepts before moving on. He included questions in his lecture slides that could be answered anonymously by his clicker-carrying students.
“Sometimes it helps the students realize well before the next quiz that, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t actually get this concept,’ and so it helps alert the students to gaps in their own knowledge,” Victoria Getis, director of the Digital Union, said.
The Digital Union has run several workshops for instructors about clicker use and will host a conference in May.
In 2005, the university standardized audience response software. A commission, which Reay co-chaired, established guidelines for clicker use.
Before the guidelines were established, professors who used clickers often used different brands and software, which had varying levels of efficiency.
The commission advocated for radio frequency models because they had a longer range, and also recommended utilizing one type of software so students would not have to buy different clickers for each class.
The university partnered with an Ohio-based company, Turning Technologies, LLC. Rob McMillen, eLearning consultant with Ohio State’s Learning Technology, said standardized use allows the university to provide adequate support and to keep track of software and hardware updates.
The software has been downloaded on 380 classroom computers and is also available in computer labs. McMillen said the software was provided for free by Turning Technologies, but the university did pay $99 for each radio frequency antenna installed in classrooms.
Some instructors require their students to buy clickers for their classes. They are sold in campus bookstores for about $40. They are also available to instructors on loan from Classroom Services.
Besides making large lectures more interactive, McMillen said the clickers also help students feel more comfortable sharing their opinions.
“Whether it be a class of 30, or a class of 700, many individuals are reluctant to provide their opinion and raise their hand. So what a clicker can do is really break that down,” he said.
For instance, students can respond to questions about political or religious beliefs simply by pressing a button rather than raising their hands and possibly being singled out.
Reay cautioned that clickers do not solve all problems. He said students tended to have negative opinions of them if they are only used to gauge attendance.
He also said they could be overused as well. He likened them to cake icing, noting that too much or too little could spoil the cake.
For instructors, learning how to ask the right kinds of questions for students with clickers is key, Getis said.
She said that instructors are most curious to learn how to ask questions “that will actually lead you somewhere in the classroom rather than implementing the technology just for the technology’s sake.”
Despite OSU standardizing the software, Getis and McMillen agree that they remain under-utilized on campus. Getis said she didn’t think enough instructors knew about them or the support that is offered in getting started.
“People are still discovering the Digital Union, let alone clickers,” she said.
Turning Point software can also be downloaded on students’ smartphones and laptops, essentially turning them into clickers.
McMillen said this could be the next step in making their use more widespread.
Getis predicts that if more classrooms adopted the clicker technology, “that you would not see an instructor standing at the front of the classroom lecturing for the entire class period with no interaction from the students; that you would see students involved, engaged, giving feedback, working together.”
The Digital Union is hosting workshops Feb. 5 and Feb. 12 about clickers. For more information visit: lt.osu.edu.
