Clickers are no more than devices that can make sound or be used to train animals. These days clickers are used in university classrooms as an effective way of interactive teaching.These clickers can be used to anonymously and rapidly collect an answer from individual student and reflect the results to the professor. A small, portable receiving station is placed in the front of the class to collect and record student responses.This video shows briefly how to use student response systems in a classroom.
Clickers give faculty the capability to adjust their instruction according to students reactions and answers collected by the them. And these answers can be stores in a database and be displayed in histogram,charts and graphs which can help instructors adjust their later course design. Not only instructors like clickers,but the response from students towards clickers are also positive. Students think that clickers can stimulate their involvement in class.
Wetzel(2009) proposed 10 strategies for using clickers to engage students involvement.1 clicker assignment means each student has a clicker to ensure students responsibility.2 keep the question and answer short can help students read and response quickly.3 Limit the options of answer, as many options can slow down students reactions.4 Integrate questions periodically during lessons can let students focus their attention.5 Keep voting simple can avoid lengthy explanation, and reduce explanation time. 6.Think-pair-share means that students answer question on clickers and then they have a discussion after reaching the consensus they answer questions again through PRS.7 Stations. This strategy help students keep their attention on tasks by asking them to use time wisely.8 Test review 9 Per-and post-test 10 Do not overuse PRS.
PRS is an ideal strategy of engage students involvement in class. However, in my opinion, the use of clickers can be confined to the course. For math and science course, clickers can be fully used and can work effectively. For courses like literature the use of PRS can be limited, as the answers to the questions proposed in literature course can be various based on personal views, and these problems have no right answers only reasonable ones.
References
Wetzel, D. R.(2009). 10 Personal Response Systems Teaching Strategies.Retrieved 17 Nov. 2012http://suite101.com/article/10-personal-response-systems-teaching-strategies-a159078
Clickers are also effective for students’ assessment. There are strategies in order to use clickers for assessment and they are an alternative tool for formative and summative assessment. You can use clickers through the CPS software. In addition, you can use clickers to curb cheating by delivering multiple test versions, to move question-by-question through an activity or test.
ReplyDeleteYou can see also:
http://www.lychock.com/portfolio/Documents/final%20report.pdf
http://www.engaging-technologies.com/assessment-with-clickers.html
Thank you for your information, I never realize that how the clicker can play a role in educational field before until I used it in educational technology class for voting score for group presentation. Clickers might only the simply remote personal respond system but I found that it’s quite unique and attractive. It can increase students’ interest and turn a boring class to be fun class. As Miss Hong provided useful information and point the benefits if it, I would be to add some more benefit which I thought that it might helpful. In Thailand, most students shy to answer questions in class but using clicker can help shy students to be confidence to giving answers and will more participate in the classroom. Furthermore, clickers can provide useful data feedback on student learning in the class which can show the result to teacher how many students reach the learning goal quickly .
ReplyDeleteI found a clip video on Youtube which might be useful for someone who interesting in this new device “Clickers” in the classroom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=BE&v=2G0WzfitDBA