Engaging Students and Peer Instruction
(or Merging the Affective & Cognitive Domain)
Using Clickers
Teaching Geodesy in the 21st Century Workshop
Boulder, CO - March 8, 2010
Dr. Valerie Sloan
The Affective Domain in Teaching
As science faculty, we naturally emphasize the cognitive domain in our teaching. After all,
students think and learn with their brains (we hope!). Yet the affective domain can significantly
enhance, inhibit or even prevent student learning. The affective domain includes factors such as
student motivation, attitudes, perceptions and values. Teachers can increase their effectiveness
by considering the affective domain in planning courses, delivering lectures and activities, and
assessing student learning.
What is the relevance of the affective domain in education?
If we are striving to apply the continuum of Krathwohl et al. to our teaching, then we are
encouraging students to not just receive information at the bottom of the affective hierarchy.
We'd like for them to respond to what they learn, to value it, to organize it and maybe even to
characterize themselves as science students, science majors or scientists.
We are also interested in students' attitudes toward science, scientists, learning science and
specific science topics. We want to find teaching methods that encourage students and draw
them in. Affective topics in educational literature include attitudes, motivation, communication
styles, classroom management styles, learning styles, use of technology in the classroom and
nonverbal communication. It is also important not to turn students off by subtle actions or
communications that go straight to the affective domain and prevent students from becoming
engaged.
In the educational literature, nearly every author introduces their paper by stating that the
affective domain is essential for learning, but it is the least studied, most often overlooked, the
most nebulous and the hardest to evaluate of Bloom's three domains. In formal classroom
teaching, the majority of the teacher's efforts typically go into the cognitive aspects of the
teaching and learning and most of the classroom time is designed for cognitive outcomes.
Similarly, evaluating cognitive learning is straightforward but assessing affective outcomes is
difficult. Thus, there is significant value in realizing the potential to increase student learning by
tapping into the affective domain. Similarly, students may experience affective roadblocks to
learning that can neither be recognized nor solved when using a purely cognitive approach.
Source: http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/index.html
Clickers in the Classroom
Clickers are wireless personal response systems that can be used in a classroom to anonymously
and rapidly collect an answer to a question from every student. This allows rapid reliable
feedback to both the instructor and the students.
Used well, clickers can influence and draw on student motivation, attitudes, perceptions and
values (the affective domain) by making increasing the student’s engagement in the class,
perception of the class, and interest in the course. Once students have had a class where clickers
were used for peer instruction and class discussion of concepts, they often find it hard to go back
to sitting passively in traditional lectures.
Clickers are not a magic bullet – they are not necessarily useful as an end in themselves, and it is
hard to write good clicker questions and different from writing test questions. They become
useful when the instructor has a clear idea as to what they want to achieve with them, and the
questions are designed to improve student engagement, student-student interaction (on-topic),
and instructor-student interaction. Below are some resources to help instructors use clickers
effectively in a classroom.
Clicker Resource Guide:
An instructor's guide to the effective use of personal response systems
("clickers") in teaching
prepared by University of Colorado Science Education Initiative (CU-SEI)
and University of British Columbia Science Education Initiative (CWSEI)
staff & associates. This guide was written to help instructors use clickers in
their classes in the most comfortable and pedagogically effective manner. It
includes a section on frequently asked questions about the use of clickers
and clicker questions and several good examples of clicker questions.
Videos:
Collection of videos on:
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Using clickers in the classroom -- benefits &
practical tips
Using clickers in upper division courses
More to come!
All videos produced by the University of Colorado Science Education Initiative (CU-SEI) and
the University of British Columbia Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI)
Videos produced by Eric Mazur's Group:
From Questions to Concepts: Interactive Teaching in Physics
A short video showing Eric Mazur (Harvard University) conducting interactive teaching
techniques, including clicker questions.
Mazur Group Project Galileo Video FAQs on Interactive Teaching
Short videos addressing FAQs about interactive teaching techniques, such as clicker
ConcepTests, on Eric Mazur's Group's Project Galileo portal.
Other materials included on the UBC & CU web page include:
Clicker Question Collections (a.k.a. Concept Questions)
Useful Articles and Links
Workshops, Talks, and Posters
Interactive Engagement
Interactive engagement is a broad term encompassing many aspects of student-centered
instruction. Interactive engagement has been well-established in 30 years of education research
in physics and other disciplines to improve student learning.
Clickers are a tool that can be used in many ways that do not encourage interactive engagement.
Based on research at CU and elsewhere, we recommend the following question cycle to promote
student learning.
Clicker Question Cycle
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Learning Goals
Ask question
Peer Discussion
Vote
Whole Class Discussion
Interpret & use results
Each of these stages has their own challenge.
A Personal Account & Tips
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Some of the best advice I got when I started using clickers was to “start slow.” Just use
one or two clicker questions at the outset to start learning how to use them.
Give points for wrong answers (e.g. 2), and another for right answers (e.g. 3)
It’s recommended to make clicker question grades worth only 5-10% of a grade or even
better, a bonus grade (they love that and are motivated by it).
The biggest challenge I have had is writing good clicker questions. More often than I
would like, my questions (or answers) turn out to be ambiguous, which can lead to great
discussions, but moreso when the professor has made them ambiguous on purpose and
isn’t caught off-guard!
Rather than getting hung up on mainly using clicker questions, also focus on other ways to
engage the students.
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Walk around the lecture hall as you lecture.
Ask questions as you walk around, and get the students talking
When a student asks a question, put it back to the class and ask for an answer
Ask for their name (“Tell me your name again?”)
Use the board to explain a concept – it is more dynamic than a static diagram, and
students will draw and write it down.
Lead into concepts with a question first. For example, lead the 3 rock types unit with a
slide of photos of each rock type and ask the class to describe what they see in each rock
and what is different between them. This actually gets the student invested in what the
answer is . . .
Test the students’ understanding of a concept first. This gives you a lot of good
information, and, as in the point above, gets them interested in the right answer.
Get someone to proof-read your questions. Having bad clicker questions can make for an
awful time teaching! (trust me!)
Do one-minute papers after you’ve covered a concept in class, and spot grade 5 of them
each time.
There are a lot of good ideas out there . . . these are just a few suggestions.
The Geoscience Concept Inventory at Michigan State University
The Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI) is a multiple-choice assessment instrument for use in the Earth
sciences classroom. Go to the website to access ~70 questions which have been carefully reviewed.
Example question: The following maps show the position of the Earth’s continents and oceans. The ‘s
on each map mark the locations where volcanic eruptions occur on land. Which map do you think most
closely represents the places where these volcanoes are typically observed?
A. Mostly along the margins
of the Pacific and Atlantic
Oceans
B. Mostly along the margins
of the Pacific Ocean
C. Mostly in warm climates
D. Mostly on continents
E. Mostly on islands
https://www.msu.edu/~libarkin/GCIinventory.html
Tips for Successful “Clicker” Use
© Dr. Douglas Duncan, University of Colorado, 2008
Including recommendations from members of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative
More than 1,000,000 clickers are in use nationwide, and over 17,000 at CU. Data gathered
during the past few years makes it clear which uses of clickers lead to success, and which lead
to failure. Success means that both the faculty member and students report being satisfied with
the results of using clickers.
Clickers have many possible uses: Find out if students have done assigned reading before
class; measure what students know before you start to teach them and after you think you’ve
taught them; measure attitudes and opinions, with more honest answers if the topic is personal
or embarrassing; get students to confront common misconceptions; facilitate discussion and
peer teaching; increase student’s retention of what you teach; transform the way you do
demonstrations; increase class attendance; improve student attitudes. None of these are
magically achieved by the clicker itself. They are achieved – or not achieved – entirely by
what you do in implementation.
TECHNICAL POINTS:
Try and get your school to adopt one clicker brand. Students hate being forced to buy
more than one clicker!
RF (radio) clickers are easier and cheaper than infrared ones.
Simpler clickers (e.g. iClicker) have fewer implementation problems.
Test your registration system before students do. Deliberately make some mistakes and
see what happens. Check early in the semester that all responses are getting credited.
Practices that lead to Successful Clicker Use
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Have clear, specific goals for your class, and plan how clicker use could contribute to
your goals. Do not attempt all the possible uses described above at one time!
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You MUST MUST MUST explain to students why you are using clickers. If you don’t,
they often assume your goal is to track them like Big Brother, and force them to come to
class. Students highly resent this.
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Practice before using with students. Remember how irritated you get when A/V
equipment fails to work. Don’t subject students to this.
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Make clicker use a regular, serious part of your course. If you treat clicker use as
unimportant or auxiliary then your students will too.
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Use a combination of simple and more complex questions. Many users make their
questions too simple. The best questions focus on concepts you feel are particularly
important and involve challenging ideas with multiple plausible answers that reveal
student confusion and generate spirited discussion. Show some prospective questions
to a colleague and ask if they meet this criteria.
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If one of your goals is more student participation, give partial credit, such as 1 point for
any answer and 2 for the correct one, for some clicker questions. With some questions it
is appropriate to give full credit to all students, such as when multiple answers are valid
or when you are gathering student opinions.
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If your goal is to increase student learning, have students discuss and debate
challenging conceptual questions with each other. This technique, peer instruction, is a
proven method of increasing learning. Have students answer individually first; then
discuss with those sitting next to them; then answer again.
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Stress that genuine learning is not easy and that conceptual questions and
conversations with peers can help students find out what they don’t really understand
and need to think about further, as well as help you pace the class. Students tend to
focus on correct answers, not learning. Explain that it is the discussion itself that
produces learning and if they “click in” without participating they will probably get a lower
grade on exams than the students who are more active in discussion. My students came
up with the phrase, “No brain, no gain.”
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Use the time that students are discussing clicker questions to circulate and listen to their
reasoning. This is very valuable and often surprising. After students vote be sure to
discuss wrong answers and why they are wrong, not just why a right answer is correct.
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Compile a sufficient number of good clicker questions and exchange them with other
faculty. The best questions for peer discussion are ones that around 30-70% of students
can answer correctly before discussion with peers. This maximizes good discussion and
learning. There is value in discussion even if a question is difficult and few know the
answer initially.
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If you are a first-time clicker user, start with just one or two questions per class. Increase
your use as you become more comfortable.
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Explain what you will do when a student’s clicker doesn’t work, or if a student forgets to
bring it to class. You can deal with that problem as well as personal problems that cause
students to miss class by dropping 5-10 of the lowest clicker scores for each student.
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Talk directly about cheating. Emphasize that using a clicker for someone else is like
taking an exam for someone else and is cause for discipline. Explain what the discipline
would be.
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Watching one class or even part of a class taught by an experienced clicker user is a
good way to rapidly improve your clicker use.
Practices that lead to Failure
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Fail to explain why you are using clickers.
Use them primarily for attendance.
Don’t have students talk with each other.
Use only factual recall questions.
Don’t make use of the student response information.
Fail to discuss what learning means or the depth of participation and learning you
expect in your class.
Think of clickers as a testing device, rather than a device to inform learning.
If you believe that the teacher, not the students, should be the focus of the classroom
experience, it is unlikely that clickers will work well for you.
Be prepared . . . Effective clicker use with peer discussions results in a livelier and more
interesting class, for you as well as the students! Expect good results immediately but
better results as you become more experienced with clickers. This is the usual experience
nationwide.
Further information and references will be put in http://casa.colorado.edu/~dduncan/clickers
. I’d like to hear about your experiences, good and bad, and perhaps include them in future
editions of my book on how to teach with clickers. dduncan@colorado.edu.
Stages of Practice
New users to clicker systems tend to become more sophisticated users of this teaching
technique by moving through several stages. We cover these in our workshop. Feel free to use
the spaces below to make some notes for yourselves. Be patient – it is hard to do many new
things well at once. You may wish to feel comfortable at one stage before working hard on your
practice at the next one.
Technology
Stage of
Practice
Some main points
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Interpreti
ng
results
Discussions
Writing
questions
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Registering clickers
Instructor clicker
Showing and hiding
histograms
Operating clickers and
integrating with
powerpoint and other
systems.
Writing at the right level
of difficulty
Writing clear questions
Choosing good
distractors
Facilitate peer and
whole-class
discussions
Getting students to talk
Student misbehavior
Using the information in
your teaching
Integrating questions
with rest of the class
Notes
Prepared by staff of the CU Science Education Initiative
and the UBC Carl Wieman SEI*
Clicker Resource Guide
An Instructors Guide to the Effective Use of
Personal Response Systems (Clickers) in Teaching
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Clickers are not a magic bullet – they are not necessarily useful as an end in themselves.
Clickers become useful when you have a clear idea as to what you want to achieve with
them, and the questions are designed to improve student engagement, student-student
interaction, and instructor-student interaction.
• What clickers do provide is a way to rapidly collect an answer to a question from every
student; an answer for which they are individually accountable. This allows rapid reliable
feedback to both you and the students.
• Used well, clickers can tell you when students are disengaged and/or confused, why this
has happened, and can help you to fix the situation.
• The best questions focus on concepts you feel are particularly important and involve
challenging ideas with multiple plausible answers that reveal student confusion and generate
spirited student discussion.
• A common mistake is to use clicker questions that are too easy. Students value challenging
questions more and learn more from them. Students often learn the most from a question
that they get wrong.
• For challenging questions, students should be given some time to think about the clicker
question on their own, and then discuss with their peers.
• Good clicker questions and discussion result in deeper, more numerous questions from a
much wider range of students than in traditional lecture.
• Listening to the student discussions will allow you to much better understand and address
student thinking.
• Even though you will sacrifice some coverage of content in class, students will be more
engaged and learn much more of what you do cover.
• When clickers are used well, students overwhelmingly support their use and say they
help their learning.