Tag: clickers

Guest Post: Using “Clickers” at U. Tennessee to Draw in OM Students

This Guest Post comes from Dr. Bogdan Bichescu, Assistant Professor of Management Science in the University of Tennessee’s College of Business Administration. Bogdan teaches very large OM classes and has blogged for us before about his experiences in that environment.

Attempting to improve student participation, this semester I decided to tie grade curving to class attendance and participation in my large introductory operations class. I suggested that students who attend classes and participate regularly would receive a bonus of up to 1% of their final grade. To avoid the operational challenges of collecting and grading paper attendance quizzes typical of large classes, I decided to experiment with personal response systems, i.e., “clickers”. More than 80% of the students enrolled already had a clicker registered on their name. The rest could sign up for an online account and participate via smartphones, tablets, or laptops for a small fee.

Initially intended for tracking attendance, the clickers have gradually evolved into a mechanism for evaluating content retention and promoting student engagement. I was compelled to rethink my approach to class delivery and plan more carefully for student engagement. I include clicker questions throughout my class notes to engage students at several points during class. I sometimes include questions from homework assignments or from exams. I encourage students to work in groups to answer clicker questions and I may re-poll the students on a certain concept or technique that is particularly challenging. I give credit for incorrect answers and include questions that ask for students’ opinions.

While clickers have not resulted in higher class attendance (due to the small grade contribution), I feel that classes are now more fun and engaging. The questions have generated more animated discussions, student competition (I can track which major, or group has better attendance or scores; students often go “yeah!” when they answer correctly a difficult question), and a somewhat better exam performance for the more active students (but more data analysis is needed). Student feedback has been positive and I am thus encouraged to use clickers in the future, potentially increasing the contribution of clicker questions and quizzes to about 10% -15% of the final grade.

Guest Post: Using Personal Response System “Clickers” at Texas Tech U.

Our Guest Post today is from Phillip Flamm, who is an Instructor in the ISQS Dept. of the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. His earlier Guest Post talked about teaching large  OM sections.

I began my affair with personal response system clickers in 2004. I teach large sections (300- 400 students) of Intro to OM. The most serious problems I faced were getting the students to come to class and once they were there, keeping them engaged. At that time “clickers” were just starting to be noticed in higher education. I had what I thought at the time was a great idea: require the students to have clickers for answering questions in class. This was what I call the “Ugly” period. The first devices used microwave signals. Students complained about the prices ($40) and when 300 students all sent answers in at the same time about half of them weren’t recorded.  As a result, I decided to use the system for extra credit only.

The next 3 years ushered in what I call the “bad” period . Microwave signals were replaced with radio frequency signals. Now all signals were received, but the new devices were still expensive and were very easily damaged. Batteries lasted about two weeks. I was swamped with complaints.

In 2010 the “good” era began. Clickers were dependable, albeit  pricey. Fortunately, Texas Tech  had adopted Turning Point  as a campus-wide vendor and used clickers became available at every book store.  But  tracking results required downloading an Excel spreadsheet after class on a memory stick and transferring it to my office computer for totaling semester extra credit results.

Will 2011 be the beginning of the “great” era?  Software is now available that allows students to use a clicker, a cell phone, or a laptop to answer questions. This should be an improvement depending upon whether it is actually easier to collect and summarize data. I’m switching to Turning Point Response Ware . From my experience I can tell you that use of clickers does provide the following advantages:

  • Refocuses the students’ attention (4 to 5 questions per lecture)
  • Allows for collaborative learning
  • Reinforces key points that may be exam questions (if students don’t get the correct answer I back track to bolster understanding).
  • Can be an excellent method of substantiating assessment for accreditation purposes.

Happy clicking!