Clickers

Click it to stick it… or how UMD adopted the Personal Response System

The challenge

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Goals for large lecture classes

Increase student engagement

Increase learning and retention

Early target classesBiologyEducationPsychology

Largest class at UMD: 320

Our intrepid crew – stage 1

Faculty technology teamCross functional, multi-college team

Information Technology ConsultantsInstructional Development ServicesFaculty membersCollegiate academic directors

Advise on purchase and development of teaching technology

Technology training development

PedagogiesPose a questions for class to answer in writing …

answer revealed during class as mini-lectures or as the culmination of the lecture

Having students solve a problem in pairs, answer passed forward, then worked by the professor

DrawbacksDifficult to evaluate

class responses while in class

If students don’t see results of their interaction, engagement drops off

Technical SolutionPersonal/student

response system (aka “clickers”)

Overview of clicker systems

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Phase 2 - Pilot ProjectsFaculty from the Faculty Technology Team start

testing with help from the Classroom Management team

Small classrooms

Wired systems first

Infra-red systems for checkout

Successful and began to spread over a couple of years – Chancellor’s small grants, tech fee grants

Great! …. But ……Different departments bought different systems

– hard to support and train

Registration of clickers done each class

Moving around and setting up time

Loss of response units

Difficult for faculty to assess individual students

Infra-red systems often did not read accurately

Phase 3 - Time for a campus solution

Systems had become robust and attractive Integration with PowerPointRadio units available and reasonably pricedTextbook and clicker bundlesSystem vendors willing to talk about standard file

formats

Campus buzz

Commitment from our original departments

But which one? Radio vs. IR

Cost to student Size Range/accuracy in large lecture halls

Type of inputs (multiple choice, T/F, numbers)

Ease of use for instructors

Registration of units

Integration with PowerPoint

Integration with other systems

Textbook vendors bundles

New players take overClassroom technology management team

Information Technology staffWork closely with facilities management

How to decide??Asked faculty currently using systems

Vendors presentations in open meetingsAttendees at these meetings rated each vendor

Example sets loaned out for department meetings

Bookstore manager recruited to work on bundled/unbundled options

In the background …..Application developers worked on

how to register each clicker for a classHow to import scores from a class session into the

campus-wide grade calculation and reporting program

Phase 4 - Integration and Training phase

Instructional Development Service offers workshops on teaching with clickers

Online training materials on how to use the tools developed

Clickers added as a instructional topic in Tech Camp

Experienced faculty do presentations or discussions at other events

But did we succeed???Anecdotal evidence from

faculty is positiveMore students participate

in the large lecture classesFaculty have a better

sense of the class’s understanding during class

Grades or other measures??