A student at the University of Wisconsin River Falls talks about clickers.
What happened to raising your hand? What happened to being able to answer out loud? Reliance on technology may be the reason people with doctorates resort to PowerPoint and point and click in order to manage their classes. I understand the application in rooms of over 200 students. However, if no one else has noticed, our school holds a 30-1 ratio.
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March 7th, 2010 at 9:03AM
Although I am in general a big technology fan, this clicker stuff is absurd. Reminds me of dog training or throwing food to the seals at the zoo. Prove to me that you are awake?
Alternate free method:
Does anyone have any questions?
If I don’t see your hand, please feel free to ask anyway…
March 7th, 2010 at 9:39AM
Does anyone have any questions?
As anyone who’s looked at pedagogy for more than five minutes can tell you, that’s generally a useless question. Clickers work when used appropriately. So does PowerPoint. That they’re often used inappropriately doesn’t make them less valuable. Criticize bad teaching all you want, but don’t criticize otherwise worthwhile tools used by worthless people. It’s like criticizing English because some people speak it badly.
March 7th, 2010 at 10:03AM
Michael: You’ve made some bald statements that need at least a stab at substantiation. How do you know that clickers and PowerPoint work when used appropriately? What do you mean by “work” and “appropriately”?
This blog has published, over the course of five years, tons of student testimonials, backed up by precise descriptions and narrations of classroom experience, as to the non-utility in many cases of these technologies. I don’t post all of these complaints. This blog is about many other things besides teaching quality. The complaints would take up too much of my space. If you want to read more of them, look at Rate My Professors. They’re all over the place there.
Asking if there are any questions doesn’t seem to me to be useless at all — unless it comes at the end of a dull, disengaged reading of PowerPoint scripts by a professor. Students are barely going to look up from Facebooking on their laptops to register that the question about questions has been asked. If the question comes at the end of a rousing and provocative lecture with plenty of eye contact, or if it’s asked at various points during an energetic and sociable discussion session, it can be quite useful.
March 7th, 2010 at 1:01PM
It might be helpful to contextualize this: “As anyone who’s looked at pedagogy for more than five minutes can tell you, that’s generally a useless question.”
This argument is generally made by Ed-school professors and Principals of high schools. For the (jargon warning!) “reluctant learner” this is true. No matter how energetic or thoughtful your lesson/lecture/seminar is, a learner who doesn’t want to learn or is insecure about material will probably not respond to that out of fear (of ridicule, lower grades, social fear, etc).
But by the time kids get to colleges and universities those silly (but real) insecurities of youth have typically evaporated.
So, that question for kids is NOT a good one. That question for adults is totally valid.
March 7th, 2010 at 3:20PM
If you frequently ask the question: Are there any questions, and you don’t ever get any, you’re doing something wrong.
And yes, as Jeff says, college students are adults. Treat them like this and you might be surprised.
And actually what I say is: Are there any questions or comments?
I have gotten some incredible comments that made my day, week, or year. Once I gave a lecture that included a section on genetic engineering of food that could have been interpreted as supportive. When I asked THE QUESTION, A student gave an extemporaneous response that destroyed my arguments.
That’s what some of us live for.
March 7th, 2010 at 6:11PM
@Jeff: Ideally, collegians of all ages would be self-possessed enough to ask questions when they’re lost, although even at that age, many fear that they’d be delaying the class (that fear had to come from somewhere) and some might still be status-conscious.
David Friedman (or perhaps it was Steven Landsburg) once wrote a passage about only finding out that students had trouble with an economics concept after he’d scored an assignment, or, more troublingly, a test. He wished for a way to let students anonymously let on that they weren’t getting it, suggesting a footswitch under each chair so that he could ask “Is it clear? Depress the footswitch if it isn’t.” If a red light comes on at the back of the room, that’s a request to go over it again.
The clicker could serve that purpose, or for some quick active learning tricks. As a way of monitoring attendance, or as a substitute for discussion, no.