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What are the challenges in using clickers well?
The biggest challenge in adopting any technology for teaching and learning is to embed it within a sound instructional strategy that integrates relevant learning activities into the class or course design.
- Designing Good Questions
- Facilitating Discussions
- Classroom Management
- Assessing Your Students
- Your Learning Curve
- Technical Problems
Designing Good Questions
1. Writing good questions is hard work
Do your questions work?
Eric Mazur asserts that "the success of the [Peer Instruction] method depends to a large extent on the quality and relevance of [the] questions" (26)—and the literature agrees, regardless of the specific questioning model. You may find that the greatest part of the workload in adopting interactive teaching with clickers is not in learning the technology, but in devising, testing and revising your questions. Question banks exist for some subjects, but even so, questions have to be selected and adapted for your needs.
2. Questions are both strategic and tactical
Ian Beatty and colleagues (2006) maintain that a good question aims to (1) address the subject at hand, (2) develop cognitive skills, and (3) stimulate thinking about the discipline and about learning. Some strategic goals for questions might include: drawing out students' background knowledge and beliefs on a topic, making students aware of their own and others' perception of a situation, discovering points of confusion or misconception, distinguishing two related concepts, realizing parallels or connections between different ideas, elaborating the understanding of a concept, or exploring the implications of an idea in a new or extended [or ambiguous] context (Beatty, 2004).
Beatty and colleagues further suggest that questions are tactical: they can be designed to achieve a specific purpose in class, such as (1) directing attention and raising awareness, (2) stimulating cognitive processes, (3) gathering formative feedback, (4) promoting articulation, conflict and productive discussion (Beatty et al, 2006).
3. There's help for learning to design good questions
The references above and some additional resources for question design can be found on the Resources and references page.
Facilitating Discussions
When integrating clickers into your classes, it is as important to plan for the discussion of results as it is to design good questions. Having students examine the reasons behind their answers, identify their assumptions and beliefs, and clarify their expectations and understandings promotes deeper learning. Several strategies for using clickers and structuring discussion around their use are provided in "What strategies are people using with clickers in their classes?"
Along with discussion as a teaching strategy comes the requirement for instructors to manage the classroom in new ways, taking on roles of facilitator, moderator and guide. Beatty (2004) points out that to use clickers effectively:
We must learn to give up control and allow learning to occur without constant micromanagement. When we present a question, we should resist the temptation to read the question out loud or clarify it. If it contains ambiguities, it's better to allow class discussion and student questions to bring them out; we should learn to be quiet and wait while students read, discuss, and answer a question. During class-wide discussion, we should be tolerant of silences while students ponder and make up their minds to speak out. It is at time appropriate to paraphrase a student's statements for the rest of the class or to help a struggling student express an idea, but we should always confirm our accuracy with the originator. Rather than jumping on errors or flaws in an argument, we should whenever possible allow other students to find them, even if this is inefficient.
To explore this topic further, please see CST's recommended resources on discussion method teaching.
Classroom Management
Student expectations
Interactive teaching demands that students adopt a new way of learning, especially in large lectures where they may be accustomed to being passive. Don't be surprised if not every student sees clickers as a fun and engaging way to learn! Here are two ideas for managing student expectations and overcoming initial resistance to your adoption of clickers:
- Start using clickers early, and use them regularly. Even if clickers are not a daily part of your class and you do plan to do some traditional lecturing, introduce the students to the system very early in the term before they have had time to get "set in their ways."
- Communicate openly about your teaching. Make it clear to the students what is different about how you teach this course, why, what it means for how they learn, and what benefits you expect them to realize—especially if your use of clickers represents a fundamental shift away from how your course is "typically" taught. Eric Mazur recommends surveying students at the first class so that you can address specific expectations about how you will teach and how they will learn.
Time for content
Because questioning and responding takes time, you may find it difficult to cover as much content as you would have otherwise—that is, interactive teaching with clickers might require redesign of some aspects of your course, including making some hard decisions about what details to leave out. The flip side is that you may observe deeper learning of the material that you do cover (Hake, 1998; Mazur, 1997; Beatty et al, 2006). Additionally, you may want to re-consider how, when, and where coverage of some course content occurs. For example, some instructors place more responsibility on the students to complete readings and practice procedures before or after class, while in-class activities will focus on reinforcing conceptual understanding.
Managing active learning breaks
In any class you might use a variety of active learning strategies in addition to questioning with clickers. It's easy for active learning activities to deviate from plan, and it can be challenging to get back on track when you need to! At the end of a lively discussion, try taking a poll or posing a question to get students to focus back on the task at hand.
Assessing Your Students
Adoption of clickers may reflect a significant change in your day-to-day teaching strategies—should this change affect not only what you do in the classroom, but also how you assess your students?
In an ideal course design, assessment methods are aligned with goals, activities and assignments. If a PRS is used to check student understanding of concepts and tests require only applying formulae or recalling facts, it may be that the assessment is not measuring what the students can actually do. Further, students may not see a relationship between what is done in class and what really matters to them: passing the exam. They might resist participating in active questioning activities; or, they might learn the concepts well but not have a chance to demonstrate their progress. Eric Mazur (1997) stresses the importance of including assignment and exam questions that are qualitatively alike to the PRS questions used in class, though the formal assessment might ask students to work on more complex problems, or in new contexts.
Your Learning Curve
If an instructor projects a sense of comfort and confidence with a new technology, the "tech" will quickly become secondary to the learning activities. While clickers themselves are easy to use, there will be a learning curve for the instructor who must use the software to create and deliver questions. It's best to plan time to practice well before any planned class activities. In addition to formal training, consider trying these strategies:
- Observe a colleague who is already using clickers
- Borrow some clickers and practice posing and answering your own questions, both pre-programmed and spontaneous
- Learn how to trouble-shoot simple technical problems with the software and hardware
Technical Problems
Of course, technical problems can occur despite all efforts to be prepared, and it is always best to have a back-up plan. Show of hands?
