Using clickers as part of your teaching repertoire might be fun but, as with any innovation in your classroom, it's important to consider the pedagogical reasons for using them.  Our aim is to improve the experiences of students, particularly those in large groups.  What benefits can clickers offer them?

In order to explore this question in more depth it's useful to look at what the research in higher education tells us about good practice.  Chickering and Gamson's (1987) paper "Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education" provided a useful integration of the research and set out some key principles for undergraduate teaching and learning. 

Good practice in undergraduate education

Encourages contact between students and teaching staff - especially contact focussed on the academic agenda

Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students - teaching them to work productively with others

Encourages active learning - thinking, doing, and thinking about what they're doing

Gives prompt feedback - and helps students figure out what to do in response

Emphasises time on task - provides lots of useful, productive, guided practice

Communicates high expectations - and encourages students to have high self-expectations

Respects diverse talents and ways of learning - and engenders respect for intellectual diversity

(adapted from Chickering and Gamson, 1987)

Implementing the seven principles  

In their 1996 article, Chickering and Ehrmann describe how teaching technologies should be implemented in a manner consistent with the seven principles.  Let's consider how we might ensure that clickers are used similarly.

1. Good practice encourages contact between students and teaching staff

In large classes, clickers play a vital role in reducing the communication gap between students and teachers.  One of the main benefits for teachers of using clickers is the immediacy of the feedback about the students' understanding of a concept.  Clickers can help to create a sense of dialogue within the lecture where all students have an equal opportunity to register their ideas and respond to questions.  Of course, it is important to encourage students to talk to you directly if they have questions: using clickers tends to send the message that the teacher is interested in what students have understood, and this may well make communication easier.

2. Good practice develops reciprocity and cooperation among students

We see learning as a collaborative and social process.  The quality of what students learn is likely to be improved if they share ideas and respond to each other's thinking.  Clickers can provide an ideal opportunity for students to work together to solve a problem or consolidate their understanding. Posing a question and asking students to discuss it amongst themselves before answering allows students to suggest an answer, review it, and possibly argue about why it is correct before pressing the button to submit it.  Alternatively, discussion following a question which has polled a large spread of answers can help to increase understanding as students explain why they answered the way they did.  If the question is then asked a second time, responses tend to become more polarised as misunderstandings are ironed out by the group.

3. Good practice encourages active learning

In a lecture theatre of 200 students it is really hard to get them all actively involved. Even a simple 'true/false' clicker question will help students to participate actively in the lecture.  For example, if you have been lecturing on a topic for 15 minutes, students' attention may be starting to wane.  By posing a question based on the material you have just been presenting, you encourage the students to look back at their notes or ask the person next to them.  This kind of 'mini-assessment' has been shown to increase students' recall of the topic when tested on it later.

If you would like to do something a little more sophisticated write a question that asks students to hypothesise about a new outcome based on the information they already have.  For example, show the students a plant that they have not seen before and ask them to speculate on where it grows based on their knowledge of how environment affects structure.  This would require students to engage in some relatively higher order thinking: an example of a question like this can be found here (add link).

4. Good practice includes prompt feedback

Clicker technology is founded on the belief in the importance of prompt feedback.  Students learn best when they are given prompt feedback on their performance and the clickers ensure that they receive feedback about their understanding immediately. Instant feedback reinforces their successes and means that they can alter notes or highlight the points that they need to work on later.

Immediate feedback is not just a one-way process. In a huge meta-analysis of the education literature, Hattie (2009) found that the information obtained by teachers about their students' understanding was one of the most important factors in subsequent student improvement.  Many teachers have mentioned the importance of this type of feedback in their teaching. If students have not grasped an idea, the teacher can alter the focus of their teaching, pose new questions to explore the misunderstanding or simply advise on the best place to find out more.

5. Good practice emphasises time on task

Chickering and Ehrmann comment on the value of learning to use time well in study.  One way in which we can help with this is to encourage students to continue with their learning outside the classroom. This is not something that comes from using clickers alone but from the ways in which we think about our teaching and the how we design our lectures as a result of that.  If students perceive that the learning requirements of the course are contained in the 50 minutes spent in the lecture, then there is little incentive for them to exert themselves outside it.

Using clickers allows you to plan your lectures as a way to stimulate learning.  Why not start the lecture with a small quiz which assumes that students will have done some preparation? Alternatively, use the lecture time to reinforce important concepts or to extend students' thinking about something which they have studied by themselves.  Some lecturers use the lecture time purely for clicker-based tests which provide students with feedback about their study.

6. Good practice communicates high expectations

As Chickering and Ehrmann say, "high expectations are important for everyone - for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated. Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy." (p4)  Because clickers are so easy to use, the opportunities for including new and challenging materials in your lectures are increased.  Formulating questions for which there may be more than one good answer or which require students to make inferences based on the information they have, can challenge and motivate everyone.  (link to example)

7. Good practice respects diverse talents and ways of learning

All students have different backgrounds, different knowledge and different ways of learning.  As with any technological initiative, clickers won't suit everyone (although the vast majority of students that we have worked with have been really positive about using them); they are simply a tool to help students learn.  Our advice is to integrate clickers into your teaching, taking all of the seven principles into consideration.  Use them when it makes sense to do so and perhaps try them alongside other teaching methods or in combination with other tasks.  If you are well-organised, provide appropriate and challenging tasks using a variety of techniques and check students' understanding regularly then you can't go too far wrong.

Have fun!

References

Chickering, A. and Ehrmann, S.C. (1996), Implementing the seven principles: technology as lever, AAHE Bulletin, October, pp. 3-6 - http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html

Chickering, A. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987), Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education, AAHE Bulletin, March. - http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/7princip.htm

Hattie, J. (2009), Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, London: Routledge.