Clickers: opportunities and challenges Trish Murray, Anthony Rossiter & G. Panoutsos.

Clickers: opportunities and challenges

Trish Murray, Anthony Rossiter & G. Panoutsos

At the beginning of this academic year, all first year Engineering students were given their own “clicker”.

These are handsets for electronic voting that support students responding immediately to questions posed by staff in the classroom.

Questions can be used most simply to quiz/check specific understanding but they can also be used in more innovative ways as well.

In this session we will explore:• Key stages in the “clicker” project.• How staff are teaching with clickers. • Whether clickers change teaching.• What students think about clickers.

Introduction

Questions

This session is intended to be interactive, to give participants the opportunity to both contribute and ask questions.

Please feel free to ‘interrupt’ at any point.

It is not important if we do not complete all the slides. Hard copies are available for those who would find this useful.

Which faculty are you in?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

10%

0%

30%

35%

5%

20%

0%

1. Engineering

2. Arts & Humanities

3. Medicine, Dentistry & Health

4. Science

5. Social Science

6. International Faculty City College Thessaloniki

7. Not at UoS

Are you?

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100%

0%

1. Student

2. Staff

Have you experience of using clickers?

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0%

40%

60%

0%

1. Student: no

2. Student: yes

3. Staff: yes

4. Staff: no

The experience of the Faculty of Engineering

The “Top-down” perspective

Motivation

• Better teaching > better learning• Opportunity to give feedback > enhance

NSS scores• Raised student expectation in light of 9k/yr

– Attendance monitoring

(1) Convincing people with money

• Demos of good practise use (of clickers) to strategic groups: (FLTC & FEB)

• Reporting of positive experiences by staff• Need for students to have individual

clickers in order to make usage easy• FLTC recommended purchase• Implementation plan in place and staffed

(2) Convincing staff to adopt

• Benefit to student learning• Easy to use: creating slides

– Works with PPT, easy to create slides– Software can be installed on any machine

• Easy to use: implementation– Software on the Common Desktop

• Departmental demos of good practice• Tailored training, “Help” documentation,

circulation of software

(3) Implementation• Purchasing/procurement/delays• Took advice from Medicine• CICS: the managed desktop, faculty need• Departmental admin help• Individualising the clickers

– Registration details (for L1 students)• Getting them to departments > students• Training staff

Issues: Staff• Cannot get to all students for beginning of

term because of individualising with registration details.

• Not really about creating interactive slides but changing the way you teach i.e. time

• Initial training focussed on use with PPT; MAC users left out.

• Use is currently patchy

Issues: Students• No choice in being given a clicker• Asked to pay £30 to replace if lost• Expectations!

– When lost, is time intensive to replace (given individualising). How often will clickers be replaced (termly)?

• Expectations!– Raised in being given a clicker and then not

met if staff not using them

Your opinion…

Would you like to see more widespread use of clickers in teaching?

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0%

100%

1. Yes

2. No

Rank obstacles to uptake in your own department/area (biggest obstacle first).

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11%

26%24%

23%

16%

1. Student reluctance

2. Teaching Staff reluctance

3. Management reluctance

4. Cost

5. Operational support

The Staff Perspective…

Staff perspectives: Logistics• Getting clickers to students took about 30min

(once given to us by faculty).• A large number of students seem to be bringing

them to lectures – perhaps encouraged by regular staff usage.

• Having to carry the receiver is somewhat irritating as I keep leaving it in the lecture theatre and then having to go back for it.

• You need to get software put on your computer to prepare questions.

Lecture preparationIt takes an extra 15-30 minute to prepare a lecture as the

question slides need to be carefully thought through, and written. Of course this could be traded off with alternative forms of giving students feedback and the ability to re-use in future years.

Sometimes pre-prepared slides for future lectures need to be modified, so I tend to do this on the day or the day before.

I don’t include question slides in handouts (to avoid students seeing in advance), so students need to copy by hand if they want a record. However, this does mean having duplicate sets of powerpoint slides.

Efficacy• As seen by student feedback next, for the most part the

questions have been effective in getting student interaction and engagement during lectures.

• They have also provided good feedback to the lecturer on issues where students are confused, or indeed most students are competent.

• There is a limit to the potential uses, for example questions with simple yes or no answers.

• I have not tried more advanced usages, partially due to time pressures and hence stuck with the tried and trusted slide of choose 1 from n options.

• Quite good for an end of term formative exam to test understanding of class as a whole.

EXAMPLES OF USAGE IN LECTURES

What is the Laplace transform for

221 2 3 4 5

40%38%

4%

9%9%

tt ee 24 42

1. 2/(s-4) + 4/(s-2)

2. 4/(s+2) + 2/(s+4)

3. 4/(s-4) + 2/(s-2)

4. 4/(s+4) + 2/(s+2)

5. Don’t know

Demonstrates a common

misunderstanding.


231 2 3 4 5

3%

16%

3%8%

71%te t 5sin4

1. (s-4)/[(s-4)2+52)]

2. (s+4)/[(s+4)2+52)]

3. 1/(s+4) + 5/[s2+52]

4. (s+5)/[(s+5)2+42)]

5. Don’t know

Demonstrates something most students cannot

do.


241 2 3 4 5

0%

10%

45%

0%

45%22t

1. 1/s2

2. 2/s2

3. 2/s3

4. 1/s3

5. 4/s3

Demonstrates a simple

error.

f(t) has a Laplace transform

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5%

11%8%

0%

8%

68%

tetf 42)(

);4(26);4(25

;2

44;

4

23

;4

22;

2

41

sGsGs

Gs

G

sG

sG1. G1

2. G2

3. G3

4. G4

5. G5

6. G6

Most of class can do this.

Advanced use: Feedback/Curriculum Design

• Students to provide feedback via clickers• Frequency: after each thematic section is over

(3-4 lectures)• Lecturer responds to feedback directly by:

– Providing extra material/guidance/feedback (MOLE)– Adjusting future lectures/content to suit students’

learning needs• i.e. repeat examples, highlight topics/key areas etc.

• Achievements:– Quickly/efficiently assess performance/understanding– ‘Tailor’ course delivery to a particular cohort


• Implementation:– ACS125 (Y1 Engineering, 70 students)– Workload

• 5mins before each feedback session– To create feedback slide

• 5mins during the lecture– To allow usage of clickers – discuss with students

• 15mins after each feedback session– To analyse results and post response on MOLE

» If needed: amend/add key points in future lectures


• Questions don’t have to be just about the understanding of technical content

• The students’ opinion can also be sought on:– Do they need more feedback on their

performance?– Do they need more time to study current

content? Revision tutorial?– What type of engineering systems do they

want to investigate as part of this module?


I would like the last case study of the module to be on:

Student perspectives

After about 8 weeks of term, the cohort in ACS124 were questionned about their experience of using clickers.

The questions were done in a lecture, using clickers, and thus took only 5 min and required no post-processing.

SUMMARY:

• Clickers are effective. I like using them and recommend continued use in later years,

but

• University should provide them.

Using clickers in lectures is a good idea and helps my learning

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26%

53%

2%3%

16%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree

5. Strongly Disagree

I find it useful to see how other students in the class have answered

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40%42%

0%

6%

11%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


It forces me to engage with a question before seeing the answer.

(e.g. Without clickers I might just wait for the lecturer to show the answer and not try properly.)

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27%

41%

3%

10%

19%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


Gives me immediate FEEDBACK on my progress

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33%

46%

2%3%

15%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


It is useful to help me see when I am making a common error, or have

misunderstood a key point.

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22%

50%

5%7%

15%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


Does the requirement to return these at the end of the year (or pay to replace) mean you treat the clickers with more respect?

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27%28%

14%

8%

23%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


I would recommend all students purchase their own clicker if the faculty

did not provide them.

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0%3%

54%

26%

18%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


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24%26%

17%

14%

19%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


I believe clickers are worth the £30 each (and other costs for receivers etc.) the

faculty has paid. Please keep doing this.

I would like to see the use of clickers carried on into my second year?

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48%

27%

6%2%

16%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


The University is obliged by the government to do attendance monitoring of students. In a lecture, this is currently done by a signing in sheet. The clickers could perform the same function much more quickly and with less disruption. Would you like to see the clickers used for attendance monitoring?

1 2 3 4 5

31%

22%

18%

8%

21%

1. Strongly Agree

2. Agree

3. Neutral

4. Disagree


Clickers: opportunities and challenges Trish Murray, Anthony Rossiter & G. Panoutsos.

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