Janine Parry of Political Science spoke on November 28th and 29th, 2018 about Clicker Basics.

 

Janine Parry would describe herself as a basic clicker user.  Though she’s not usually an early adopter of technologies, she found herself using TurningPoint after she was part of the initial search for the choice of a single clicker system for the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville campus.

Her American National Government classes are very large, consisting of up to three hundred students who are non-majors getting an overview of the subject as part of their core curriculum.  In such a large classroom, she found herself not being able to connect as she wanted to with all of the students from “the front row sitters, who you know by the first exam,” to the “problem that’s happening in the back row.”  She has found that clickers offered her a tool to help make that connection.

Benefits 

  • Attendance in Large Lecture
    Students get the feeling that they are anonymous when they’re in a room so large.  Especially those students who come from rural communities, where the population of the entire high school was less than this single class.  With clickers, they are no longer anonymous.
  • Immediate Feedback
    Dr. Parry is able to check to make sure that the students have understood a concept not just for recall, but for the students’ ability to apply that knowledge to a situation.
  • Review/Warmup
    When students return from a long break (or sometimes just the weekend), it can be necessary to remind them of what they learned in the previous class.  It also helps to remind the students who weren’t there during the previous class “of the stuff they miss when their rear isn’t in a chair.”
  • Outlet for Opinion/Feeling
    Politics tends to bring out strong opinions and feelings in people, but the course is about concepts not feelings and opinions.  The clicker questions give the students a chance to anonymously express their feelings without the class being derailed with conflict and loudness.
  • Connection to Peers
    Seeing the answers of other students can give them an insight to the thoughts and feelings of those around them and let them know if their views are in the majority or minority without having to openly identify them as such. They can also make connections through peer instruction.  A question is asked and then the students are asked to turn to their neighbor and convince their neighbor that their answer was right.  After that, the question is asked again. Often the students that are right will convince the others of the correct answer.

“A lot of the time they’re really good at explaining it in a way that their classmate would understand.”

Drawbacks

As with all technology, Dr. Parry encounters some problems, but fewer with the clicker software because of the excellent support.

  • Student Startup Issues
    Students struggle at times getting their clickers registered.  It was much more difficult in the beginning, but now there are so many students using it that they help each other get registered. Let the students know that you’re not their tech support. They wouldn’t ask you to fix their laptop or show them how to use Word, so why would they depend on you to fix their clicker issues?  There is support during the first two weeks of every semester for clicker registration and use at the IT Services Help Desk.  They can also email clickers@uark.edu so there is no reason for instructors to have to provide this support.
  • Slow Login
    This was a problem in the past, but the system has improved a great deal and this is not a frequent issue.
  • Receiver Trouble
    Now that the classrooms have assigned channels that you can find on the Channel Allocations Map, this is seldom an issue.
  • Managing Absences
    Dr. Parry has found a good fix for this.  She has approximately 42 classes each semester that are not exams.  During each one of those classes, she asks clicker questions, and students get a single point for answering at least half of the questions whether they get them right or not.  However, the number of points that you earn is capped at 30.  Because of the cap, there is a built-in buffer that prevents the need to deal with tracking all absences. 

“I get most of the positives every day and get fewer and fewer of the negatives as the semester progresses.”

Methods

She asks the students clicker questions in each of her classes using TurningPoint Anywhere.  They get one point regardless of whether or not they get the questions correctly.

Tips

  • Give yourself a reminder to change to the correct channel at the start of each class.
    “Hey Parry, are you logged in on Turning Tech? Receiver on Channel #71?”
  • Let them know a clicker question is coming.
    Even though they’ve been doing it all semester, they still forget to be prepared with their clickers out to answer.