Clickers

Reillyman

Am I right in saying that only the people in the College of Science get the clickers? The only problem is that all of my lectures have people from either arts, commerce etc etc and they dont have them, therefore we can't use them?

Has anyone used them yet?

ciano1

Us IT people haven't got them yet

TheCosmicFrog

ciano1 wrote: »

Us IT people haven't got them yet

And I doubt we will anytime. We're College of Engineering.

ciano1

Well Petronel said we were supposed to be getting them very soon!!

RolandIRL

the announcement is gone from my blackboard page. dunno when it went though.

i haven't heard anything about it yet apart from what was on bb a few weeks ago.

challengemaster

I did see signs up for clicker training in the arts millennium a good while back... maybe it's just first years they're being tested on? :P

TheCosmicFrog

ciano1 wrote: »

Well Petronel said we were supposed to be getting them very soon!!

IainML

Hi there! Clickers have been used in a number of modules in various colleges over the last couple of years. What is new this year is that the College of Science decided to pilot their use in first year classes as a means of making the lectures more interactive and giving opportunity to spend a bit more time on some of the tricky concepts in the courses. The college purchased around 700 clickers for students and they have now been distributed to the classes who are going to be using them this year.

Of course its complicated when there are modules being taken by students from programmes run by other Colleges, but if the pilot proves successful there may well be a case made to extend their use to other subject areas too. The issue is a combination of cost, staff training and course design. So this is a large scale pilot to test out the basic idea and see what some of the technical and organisational issues might be in using them for large enrolment classes.

In the meantime, if you have a clicker, take care of it so you don't have to pay the 40-50 euro replacement cost! And of course enjoy the experience. The project team will be happy to hear of your experiences and your opinions about how things are going later in the semester as things settle down.

LadyMayBelle

We used these for a module in 2009/10 in the Political Science faculty.. I quite enjoyed it and it got people discussing but I felt our class was too small really (16) to see it's full potential

Ficheall

IainML wrote: »

Hi there! Clickers have been used in a number of modules in various colleges over the last couple of years. What is new this year is that the College of Science decided to pilot their use in first year classes as a means of making the lectures more interactive and giving opportunity to spend a bit more time on some of the tricky concepts in the courses. The college purchased around 700 clickers for students and they have now been distributed to the classes who are going to be using them this year.

Of course its complicated when there are modules being taken by students from programmes run by other Colleges, but if the pilot proves successful there may well be a case made to extend their use to other subject areas too. The issue is a combination of cost, staff training and course design. So this is a large scale pilot to test out the basic idea and see what some of the technical and organisational issues might be in using them for large enrolment classes.

In the meantime, if you have a clicker, take care of it so you don't have to pay the 40-50 euro replacement cost! And of course enjoy the experience. The project team will be happy to hear of your experiences and your opinions about how things are going later in the semester as things settle down.

What advantages does it have over the "Hands-up who thinks . . ." or similar method?

TheCosmicFrog

Ficheall wrote: »

What advantages does it have over the "Hands-up who thinks . . ." or similar method?

Anonymity I'd assume. Iain?

IainML

yup..that reticence or shyness can be an issue quite often in lectures, with plenty of students not willing to stick their hands up, believe it or not. Of course the clicker technology also means the 'votes' are counted and so there's an accurate measure of the popularity of the various options. It can also be advantageous in small group classes when discussing controversial topics where students might not want to speak up in favour or against particular views but where it is important for the lecturer to get a feel for the range of differing perspectives. So they have a number of potential uses.

Ficheall

IainML wrote: »

yup..that reticence or shyness can be an issue quite often in lectures, with plenty of students not willing to stick their hands up, believe it or not.

These people are aware they have to go out into the "real world" after college, right? This little extra bit of anonymity is like sweeping dirt under a rug.

IainML wrote: »

Of course the clicker technology also means the 'votes' are counted and so there's an accurate measure of the popularity of the various options.

I'd hope that lecturers would be able to hazard a fair guess at a hand count - and if there is that much doubt over a particular question that it is uncertain who the majority are, then the topic is certainly going to warrant more discussion anyway.

IainML wrote: »

It can also be advantageous in small group classes when discussing controversial topics where students might not want to speak up in favour or against particular views but where it is important for the lecturer to get a feel for the range of differing perspectives. So they have a number of potential uses.

In Science?

IainML

Hi there..no the last point about controversial issues is referring to how the technology has been used in small groups in other subjects. As for the reticence, well they are first year and part of the aim of a higher education is to help transform people so that they become confident, autonomous learners, etc, so this encourages participation as well as making lectures more dynamic.

As for the counting, well you see the point about the types of questions the clickers are aimed at is to uncover issues such as conceptual misunderstandings and a valuable question in this regard is one in which the correct answer isn't immediately obvious, so you do get splits across the class with sometimes small differences between the numbers in each category. There would be little point in picking questions where the answer is obvious. The idea is that it is tricky and promotes discussion in groups and then people are asked to vote again. That's one strategy that they are very useful for, amongst others.

It is possible also to set them up so that students can chart their own progress from question to question or topic to topic (though this isn't the approach in first science at the moment) as well as other potential uses. They can also be used for short multiple choice tests if so desired.

There's plenty of experience in the use of these devices for a range of purposes and indeed they are fairly standard in many countries, just still a bit of a novelty in Ireland at the moment, but we're getting there.

We'll let you know how the project goes on here if you want, but in the meantime you can have a rummage around some of the more detailed descriptions in some of these websites and videos:

http://www.banxia.com/prs/users-of-prs.html

http://www.banxia.com/prs/videos.html

TheCosmicFrog

That and there's always the peer-pressure thing where if the majority raise their hands the minority are more likely to go along with them.

xp90

I could be wrong but heres what a clicker may or may not look like