CLICKERS IN THE
CLASSROOM
Audience Response Systems
Typical College Classroom
• Look familiar
Why Clickers?

Active learning last longer than
passive listening

Help students find out what they
really don’t understand and what
they need to think about further

Proper use leads to higher grades

Credit for participation

Clickers are fun!

SFA has adopted Turning
Technologies
Turning Point Software
• Free download
• Integrates into Power Point
• Content questions delivered throughout lecture
Who is this person?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
George Bush
Rush Limbaugh
Edward Michaels
Martha Stewart
Jon Stewart
Barack Obama
17%
1
17%
17%
17%
2
3
4
17%
5
17%
6
Testing Point
 Integrates into WORD for creating clicker tests
 Tests are self paced
 Students answer the questions onto a paper form
 At the end of testing, student uses clicker to enter answers and
transmit to instructors computer.
Uses- Daily Quizzes
 Quizzes at the start of each class




5 pts/day
Takes 2.5 minutes each day
Allow students to miss a few without penalty
Allow bonus points for those who take them all
 Improves attendance
 Spectacular way to get students to be on time!
 Grades can be easily uploaded into gradebooks
Uses – During Lecture
 Interspersing questions during lectures helps:
 Make sure students are “getting it”
 Initiate discussions on a topic
 Keep students alert.
Uses – The “A” Word
 Collect end of semester assessment data quickly with a
clicker quiz.
ResponseWare
• Allow a laptop or smartphone to act as a clicker
• Instructor requests a session ID using Turning Point.
• Communicates the ID to students, who input the session ID into
their phone or laptop.
• The session ID communicates answers to the TurningPoint server
and then to the instructor’s computer.
• This solution is cheaper than the clicker.
Polling Software
 Top Hat (one semester is $20, five years is $38)
 Poll Everywhere ($14 per year)
 Google Docs Forms (Free)
 QuestionPress ($66 per year for up to 95 students)
 Potential Problems
 Not everyone has a smart phone (but even dumb phones can text)
 Not everyone has unlimited texting
Features
 Most polling sites can integrate into PowerPoint
 Most sites offer a free version
 Features will be limited
 Clickers can be abused or forgotten
 Students may bring several clickers to class but students will not
share their phone
 Students may forget their clicker but they will have their phones