Using Clickers in Large Classes
Don Swift, Ocean,
Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences
ODU
My Experience
I teach OEAS 106N, Introductory Oceanography.
It’s a Gen Ed course, populated largely by people who
need a science course to get their degree.
I have 385 students in one section, and when I am
through with them I have 180 more in the second session,
an hour later.
Oceanography at the introductory
Level is an “information-rich”
subject. I can’t keep them busy
working problems.
.
The Course
Welcome!
Welcome to OEAS 106 introductory Oceanography.
Course Content
Students can work simple problems in lab, but lecture is just that- lecture.
Students have referred to it as “drinking from a fire hose.”
Large classes and Crowd control
When I first heard about clickers,
I immediately thought of them
in terms of crowd control.
When you have several hundred
young people packed in shoulder to
shoulder the “titter threshold” as
my colleague phrased it, is pretty
low.
But I can cite some pedagogical advantages also.
The clicker System
Old Dominion University
presently has a contract with
Turning Point technologies.
Their clicker system consists of
a“response card,” about the size
of a playing card, with an
alphanumeric keyboard and an
LCD screen, Each student pays
about $35 for one at the
bookstore.
Instead of the mobile receiver shown here, there is a receiver bolted
into the podium in my lecture hall. Here is a typical question slide.
Clicker Quiz
Alfred Wegener’s evidence for continental drift included all but:
1.
Pattern-matching of geologic rock types across continents.
2.
Pattern-matching of paleoclimate zones across continents.
3.
Pattern-matching of volcanoes across continents.
4.
Pattern-matching of the ranges of fossils across continents.
90
77%
20%
2%
1
2
1%
3
4
Question Slides
About halfway through the
lecture, at some logical break
in Its continuity the students
have to answer the first
question.
Clicker Quiz
Alfred Wegener’s evidence for continental drift included all but:
1.
Pattern-matching of geologic rock types across continents.
2.
Pattern-matching of paleoclimate zones across continents.
3.
Pattern-matching of volcanoes across continents.
4.
Pattern-matching of the ranges of fossils across continents.
It is based on what they have
heard in the last 25 minutes.
They get 2 points for the right
answer, and 1 point for a
wrong answer (attendance
point).
90
77%
20%
2%
1
2
1%
3
They must answer a second question at the end of the Lecture.
Their clicker average is 20% of their final grade, so their have an incentive to
1) show up, 2) pay attention, and 3) stay to the end.
The students get the slide set in advance of the lecture. They can
downloadfit from Blackboard- without the two quizzes.
I sometimes re-use the questions on exams.
4
Software
The University dropped the
company that we used last
year, because it was bought
out, and the new owner
dropped clickers.
The new software is distinctly
less user friendly than last
year’s version.
But there is one distinct
advantage:The student’s
scores download smoothly into
the blackboard gradebook
Conclusions
It is still an ongoing experiment At present I am getting an
unacceptably high number of no-scores on the clicker quizzes
At first I blamed it on my having to learn new software.
Now I am blaning on the student’s slow learning curve for clicker use.
It is also possibly a software issue.
I am getting good support from university technical people- despite the
fact that they are stretched very thin.