University of Delaware Responds to Classroom Clickers

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Case Study

University of Delaware Responds to Classroom Clickers

"Have you ever found yourself standing in front of your class in the middle of a lecture and wondering what in the world is going on in the minds of your students?" --Douglas Duncan, University of Colorado, from the book, Clickers in the Classroom

8/14/2007

By Linda L Briggs

Participation and Professional Development
Use of the devices is optional in any class and up to the professor; if an instructor requires a clicker for a course, students purchase it ahead of the course as they would a textbook. The University of Delaware bookstore sells Interwrite devices for $46.65.

The university promoted the devices heavily initially, de Vry said, through classes, a summer course in which those who had used the devices discussed their benefits, and articles in the campus-wide daily online publication.

It also helped when the chair of psychology department held a full-day symposium for 90 faculty and staff members on interactive teaching in which the keynote speaker, Douglas Duncan, demonstrated how clickers can be useful in teaching physics. Duncan, who is a professor at the University of Colorado and has written a book called "Clickers in the Classroom," also discussed how faculty can use response devices to move students beyond content into higher-level thinking.

Student Use
Because the clickers can store answers and upload them later, they are also being used for homework assignments. Students can complete a short quiz on the device outside class, for example, then "turn in" the assignment at the beginning of class. With results at hand, the instructor can then assess and discuss them with the class.

An unanticipated way the devices are being used is for polling students on an issue. A yearly resident hall project, for example, is using clickers to poll students for opinions. de Vry said she's also seen the device used to good effect in staff meetings and faculty training sessions.

Integration
After some basic programming by the university, de Vry said, the devices also can be used with WebCT, the university's course management system, or with Microsoft Excel. In those cases, data collected from clicker responses can be imported into WebCT or Excel in order to create an ongoing record of student attendance or performance.

Clicker responses are anonymous in class but are tracked by a device number, which is linked to a particular student. Some faculty members, for example, give a small amount of course credit to students for clicker responses.

In gauging the IT effort required for setting up a clicker system, De Vry estimated that one member of her IT staff devotes nearly full-time effort to the project the first year, most of that spent on training, Web page development, and intense faculty support that included a short online video on how to use the devices. Now, a graduate student handles the bulk of the support. She recommends that schools considering such devices budget appropriately for training and support. "They need help and a place to go," de Vry said. "They're not going to adopt [the devices], if you just work with faculty without a support organization.... Support of the faculty is really critical."

Interwrite sells its PRS RF (radio frequency) clickers in a class pack of 32 for $1,796, including the receiver and the software. Some universities, as the University of Delaware has done, sell the devices through the bookstore. Others buy the class packs and distribute them to the students themselves.

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Linda L. Briggs is a freelance writer based in San Diego, Calif.

Cite this Site

Linda L Briggs, "University of Delaware Responds to Classroom Clickers," Campus Technology, 8/14/2007, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=49681

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