Remote-Control Classrooms

TurningPoint is one of multiple clicker systems in use at U.Va.
Photo courtesy of Turning Technologies LLC

Before long, students may be pointing and clicking in class as often as they turn the pages of their Shakespeare anthologies or solve equations on their TI-83 calculators—thanks to the clicker, a new type of remote-control technology.

“It’s like the device they use to poll the audience on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire,” says Lela Marshall, Office of Information Technology and Communication classroom support manager. “This is a couple generations newer than that.”

When a professor poses a multiple-choice question to the class, each student uses a clicker—which looks like a mini-calculator or remote control and has at least five buttons labeled A, B, C, D, E and so on—to register a response. Almost instantaneously, a separate device receives the clicker’s radio signal, tallies the answers and displays the results.

Marshall said the purpose of clickers varies from classroom to classroom. “It depends on how the professor wants to use it,” she says. “Some don’t use it at all to grade students, just to enhance learning and attention span.”

In a clicker classroom, students feel more compelled to engage in lessons and avoid distractions, says Marshall. “If you know you have to answer a question, you won’t be reading the Cav Daily in class.”

Many professors use clickers for short quizzes, while others use them to track daily student participation or attendance.

Associate Professor of Astronomy Ed Murphy usually asks about five clicker questions during his 50-minute lectures. “Educational literature shows students have a hard time following the material for more than 10 minutes. Clicker questions allow you to stop lecturing and ask questions about what you just lectured on,” he says, adding that students gain a more thorough understanding of concepts by taking a break from writing down the lecture or presentation word for word.

Economics Professor Ken Elzinga uses clickers in his 500-person ECON 201 “Principles of Economics” sections but virtually no technology in his small, ECON 420 “Antitrust Policy” class. “Clickers give students an opportunity to assess whether they have learned the material that was just covered,” he says.

Catherine White, a third-year student who uses clickers only in her Commerce School classes, which have at least 100 students, agrees—with qualification. “They help in the sense that you are somewhat forced to pay attention and there is pressure to do so, but they hurt in that you stress over seemingly silly questions,” she says.

Clickers also offer professors an opportunity to reveal student misconceptions, says Murphy, who has found through clicker surveys that students in his introductory astronomy classes incorrectly believe that astronauts are weightless in space because there is little or no gravity.

“It’s actually because they’re falling around the earth,” he says, adding that clicker surveys are “a really powerful way to ask students to pay attention and say, ‘This thing I thought I knew very well is wrong.’”

In fact, Murphy believes clicker questions that test misconceptions also show the students who are wrong that they’re not alone while allowing professors to accurately evaluate the entire class’ knowledge level. “If they’re asked to raise their hands, most students won’t participate and will often look around to make sure they don’t look foolish,” he says. “If I ask for a general discussion, only students who are confident or know of the misconception will raise their hands.”

Sarah Farrell, associate dean for academic programs in the School of Nursing, values clickers because the subject matter she teaches is often controversial. She can obtain a full picture of her students’ opinions about abortion in the context of its health policy implications without exposing individual students’ views.

Farrell, who uses clickers to supplement oral class participation and for daily quizzes, believes clickers work best for short five-question tests and long problem sets that students can solve together in groups. “To give a 30-item test would be inefficient, since every learner has a different reading and response time and the fast responders would become frustrated with the ineffective use of their time,” she says.

On the most basic level, clickers provide an incentive for attendance and participation, says Marshall.

“Clickers afford students an opportunity to be tested on the spot in a setting where the performance stakes are modest, though responses to clicker questions do figure into their final grades,” says Elzinga.

On the flip side, clickers offer opportunities for cheating. Murphy thinks placing less emphasis upon clicker questions grade-wise helps prevent students from using clickers to cheat.

“On any one day, the questions are worth much less than 1 percent of the student’s final grade. In my opinion, low-stakes testing makes it not worth cheating or another honor offense,” says Murphy, who states on his course syllabi that bringing a friend’s clicker to class is an honor offense.

Elzinga told the Cavalier Daily that after receiving e-mails letting him know “there was a lot of conversation during the clicker questions,” he reminded students that answering clicker questions was an individual effort.

“There isn’t such a great motivation to cheat on one or two clicker questions,” Assistant Economics Professor Lee Coppock told the Cavalier Daily. “If you cheated on a clicker question and you get caught, the cost is really high: You’d be expelled from the University.”

Environmental Sciences Research Associate Professor Linda Blum witnessed clicker-based cheating in her classes. “That bothers me a lot—it’s an honor violation,” she says.

One of the first professors at U.Va. to adopt the clicker, Blum originally used clickers in a large introductory class but felt she wasn’t getting input from all of her students.

“Then I started to require clickers and gave extra credit for attendance and participation, and that was okay, but it turns out the clickers aren’t very reliable,” she says. Clickers ran out of batteries or shorted out.

ITC staff provided constructive technological support, but in the end, Blum was too frustrated to keep clickers around. “It was a nightmare, quite honestly,” she says.

Farrell always brings a back-up teaching tool, such as a worksheet, in case the clickers don’t work properly.

Although Blum’s primary frustration with clickers was their unreliability, cost became a hindrance, too. Students must purchase them. They cost anywhere from $25 to $55 each, and the University has no one standard so students may need to purchase multiple devices, depending on their professors’ preference. During the 2007–2008 academic year, the University of Virginia Bookstore sold 4,262 clickers.

“It would be nice if we had clickers that were reliable and could be used in any clicker class across the University,” says Blum.

White said cost and functionality are what frustrate most students about clickers, but professors could improve the use of clickers by preparing clicker questions more thoughtfully. “They need to use clickers for good reasons, not simply because we’ve already paid for them, which often seems to be the main reason behind their use,” she says.

Farrell believes clickers may enable a fundamental shift in the atmosphere of her classroom, “to re-purpose classes to be less lecture-centered and more learner-centered,” she says.

Clickers could replace the worksheets that many nursing professors give to students to complete before class, she says. Students could receive immediate feedback about how much they understand class material instead of waiting for the teacher to grade a worksheet.

Rather than focusing classes solely on clicker questions, Farrell tailors her use of the technology to specific goals, such as fostering participation among students.

“I am very invested in the appropriate use of the tool rather than using the tool just because it exists,” she says.