Another new piece of technology that I incorporated into my large lecture class last semester was "clickers". Also known as "Personal Response Systems" (PRS), these look a lot like a TV remote control. The student buys one, brings it to class, and uses the buttons (usually A-E) to "click in" their answer to a multiple choice question.

Step one is deciding on a brand of clicker to use. There are four or five different ones out there. After some research, I settled on the "iClicker" brand (and feel free to consider this a plug for the iClicker!). Why did I go with iClicker? A couple of different reasons. First of all, that’s the clicker type that was already being used in the big biology classes, and it seemed rather evil to make students purchase a different one. But that wasn’t what decided me. I discovered that many of the clickers out there require you to use proprietary software to write and display the questions. One of the neat things about the iClicker is that you can show the questions using whatever software you want – Word, PDF, PowerPoint, anything. If you can get it up on the screen so the students can see it, it will work. And that is very cool.

So, having decided to go with the iClicker, the next step was figuring out what to do with it. Actually, there are two very different things to worry about – one is what to ask, and the other is how to collect the data and give student feedback. Deciding what to ask is pretty easy, actually. You generally have to ask questions in a multiple choice type format. But there are a lot of things you can ask! I wound up with one big PowerPoint document with all of my questions in it, which makes it easy to share the information with colleagues as well as re-use it if I am so inclined. Some of the questions were demographic in nature (when did you take freshman chemistry? Within the last year, less than two years ago, less than five years ago, etc.); but most of them were aimed at either short-term or long-term understanding of a topic under discussion. Sometimes I would ask a question BEFORE lecturing on a topic (especially if it was something that they really should have seen before in freshman chemistry); sometimes I would ask a question immediately after lecturing on a topic, and sometimes I would begin the class by asking a question on a topic from the previous class. All of those gave useful information.

A good source of questions, or at least question ideas, is the test bank that comes with most textbooks. But once you’re into the clicker mode of thinking, it’s not hard to come up with your own questions as well – and, in fact, the iClicker software gives you the option to ask questions "on the fly" so that you can make them up in the middle of class easily.

Speaking of the software, it’s amazingly easy to deal with. The whole thing runs on a thumb drive that plugs into the base that they give you (which then plugs into a USB port on the computer). It works with Windows or Macintosh. And because it’s all on the thumb drive, you can work on it on any computer without having to reinstall anything. There are two programs – iClicker.exe and iGrader.exe. As you might expect, the iClicker software is what you use in class – it pops up a little timer that is always floating on top of the other windows, and when you’re ready to ask a question, you put up the question and click "Start" on the timer. You see a countdown timer, and it also counts the number of responses clicked in. When you’re finished, you can pop up a bar graph that shows how many students chose which question, and you can then discuss it with the class if you’re so inclined.

After class, you can use the iGrader to look at the student results. The software takes a screen shot of the question, so you don’t have to worry about remembering what you asked. It generates HTML reports on the fly; and I discovered that I could copy the screen shot and the bar graph into Word very easily, and then type in a paragraph or two discussing the question and how it should be solved and whatever else I felt like saying. Then I could convert the whole thing to a PDF file and post it on Blackboard for the students to see. (See earlier post on Blackboard if so inclined.)

An informal survey of the students in the class showed that they were very happy with the iClickers. They liked having a question at the beginning of class, as it helped get everyone’s attention and focus them on the material at hand. They also noted that the questions during class helped them see if they really understood it or not (and it was very interesting for me as the instructor as well to see what they picked up quickly and what they struggled with).

I intend to continue using the iClicker in class, and at least one of my colleagues is going to try it this semester as well. I really think they are useful and very easy to use, and I highly recommend them.