Time to move away from clickers

Sometimes clickers don’t always work

I am currently part of a special project this semester called a faculty learning community. Basically we are a group of faculty that have gotten together to talk about how to use group activities to enhance student learning. One of the faculty in the community has decided to adopt a team-based learning approach based on the book by Larry Michaelsen, Arletta Knight, and L. Dee Fink (you can check it out here on Amazon: http://bit.ly/9oyD1R). The interesting thing about this team-based learning approach (TBL) is that there is a definite shift from the traditional “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side.” Students are organized in teams and they work together to learn. Some of the TBL activities though can become tedious. One such activity requires students to work in their teams to answer a quiz. In order for the activity to work, each team needs to be given relatively simultaneous feedback about whether the team choice for each quiz item was correct or incorrect. Needless to say with the traditional pen and paper approach it can be a bit of a daunting task. How can you get concurrent groups doing the same activity the ability to check their answers? Their approach to the matter is to have special scratch cards, so students scratch off what they think the correct answer is. Once they scratch off their choice, underneath the scratch card would reveal if the choice is correct or not. Here is a short video on TBL:

My initial thought was, how tedious! You have to do that for every class and every semester you are using this technique. Surely technology can make this process a lot easier. Immediately I thought about how clickers might be able to accomplish the same function. However, it doesn’t seem like clickers could perfectly fit this situation either. For clickers to work, there would need to be a group clicker and all groups would have to work on the same question at the same time. That seems like a less organic process than having each group work as a team through the quiz at their own pace.

My experience with clickers

I was one of the early adopters of clickers. I started using clickers when other professors looked at it and thought it was just some fad that those “techie professors” were doing. In fact, I served on the selection committee for our university to decide which clicker system to adopt. At that time clickers were slowly beginning to be adopted by instructors on campus and it was the right juncture to decide on one system to be used. Using one system would allow for easier support from the IT department and also save students money who only had to buy one clicker instead of several different ones.  All in all, I have to say I enjoyed the use of clickers in my teaching.

I began to get annoyed with clickers because it always required students having this extra piece of hardware. The feedback was also limited to multiple choice. Sure we could make students buy the more expensive alphanumeric clicker, but the extra cost didn’t seem justified. And, in any case, the clicker the university decided to adopt (iClicker) didn’t have a alphanumeric version. Later came alternative versions of clickers that used students’ cellphones instead of a special piece of hardware. These included the popular Poll Everywhere (http://www.polleverywhere.com) and more recently, Text the Mob (http://www.textthemob.com). These alternative versions allowed for voting by SMS and also for alphanumeric responses. It now became possible to have opened ended questions in a clicker type format. The biggest down side was that they are expensive to adopt.

The idea of clickers got me thinking, if we can use clickers within the classroom experience to enhance the learning experience, what other types of technology can we use in the classroom to enhance the learning experience? This question was coupled with another dilemma I was having in my classes, a dilemma I’m sure a lot of faculty face today.  This dilemma is students texting and doing “other” things on their computer besides taking notes (such as checking their Facebook profiles). I’ve heard of the hardcore approach: just ban the whole thing and demand obedience, no texting or Facebook checking, etc! The idea is that is just rude on the part of the student and will not be tolerated in class. But I’m not so sure the heavy hand is the way to go in dealing with this issue. Surely all of us have gone to an extremely boring talk and decided that was a good time to multitask. Clearly, if I don’t have your full attention, if I’m not fully engaging you, I leave open the possibility of you being able to do something else in the process. Ideally for me, the classroom experience should be so engaging that you don’t have time to do anything else but pay attention – it becomes the idea that either you are fully present and participating or you’ll be completely lost. There is no time to text or check your Facebook profile. Can technology create such an environment in the classroom?

Simutasking

My mind began to race with possibilities. They all revolved around an idea I have labeled simutasking. This generation of students grew up in an environment where they are used to doing several things at once, especially when they are on the computer. Computers are specifically designed to multitask – for example, the whole “windows” idea, you have your email application open, your IM program open, a couple web browser windows open, etc. Larry Rosen in his book, Me, MySpace, and I for example mentioned that it is not uncommon for teenagers to be having several IM conversations at once on the computer. Potentially, listening to one person lecture on a topic could be extremely boring to the new generation of students. So, why not create a learning environment in the classroom where students can be bombarded with several different activities at once? In other words, have students simutask. Imagine a classroom and every student has a laptop. You have a PowerPoint presentation showing. The presentation shows not only on the main projector screen, but also on the screen of every student’s laptop. In addition to the presentation screen on the student’s laptop, there are a bunch of other screens available. In one screen, there is a copy of the textbook page which is related the current slide. In another screen a short quiz question related to the slide. In yet another screen, there is a space for students to take notes, or if a student wishes, they can take notes right on the presentation slide screen. And in another screen, the ability to backchannel and ask questions. Screens are optional, so if a student wishes they can focus just on the presentation screen, or if they need more stimulation, they can do more simutasking by opening up more windows. And the instructor’s screen? A master control screen with the ability to monitor each and every student.  Have a large classroom of 200 students and want to do group work? No problem, with a simple click the instructor can create virtual groups where students can interact with each other without ever having to leave their seats. TBL problem with the ability of groups to check answers independently of other groups (mentioned at the beginning of this blog) – solved!

The closest thing I’ve seen to this (that is even mildly affordable to me) is something called Lecture Tools (http://www.lecturetools.com).  But from what I’ve seen of it, it’s still a little clunky and doesn’t have nearly all the features that this type of system needs to have. If such a system could be created and implemented, imagine how passe clickers would be! The ability to give and get feedback from the class moves to an entirely different level. Indeed Lecture Tools gives some demonstration of this. One of their interesting feedback tools is image-based, where students can select where on the image their answer is and then the instructor can show the proportion of students that selected different parts of the image.

Perhaps the greatest critique of such a system is the fact that it requires every student to have access to a device that can browse the internet. I don’t see this as a big problem though. Even on my campus (with a lot of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds), at least 80% of students have a laptop (or some kind of netbook I’m guessing). And with the growing interest in tablets (Apple’s ipad and Microsoft’s Courier) it’s not unreasonable to envision that sometime in the near future students can have access to some kind of internet browsing device for classes.

Let’s get this off the ground!

I spoke with one of the sales rep for one of the big clicker companies about my ideas. I told the rep, “you know in a couple years clickers are going to be obsolete. What’s your next big thing?” And sadly, they were stuck in the same place they were in 2 years ago and seemingly unwilling to change.  If anyone can design this vision of a simutasking system that is versatile and easy to use, they will definitely redefine the classroom experience. I want to be a part of that movement, who will join me?

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