10) Relate different representations (graphical, mathematical, …)
While each mode can be useful in the right circumstances, those in bold above are the uses
that we have seen the largest direct impact on learning and the uses that students report they
find of most value. Not surprisingly, these reflect the deepest mastery of a subject and hence
have been shown to be the most challenging for students to learn. We recommend that the
majority of questions fall into these bolded categories.
2. RECOMMENDED APPROACH TO USING CLICKERS
For questions of the bolded type, we believe it is best to usually follow the following steps:
Step A: Question
Instructor poses the question, often with some remark about its purpose.
Step B: Peer Discussion
Students have time to think about the question individually (possibly answering individually
with clicker), and then discuss the question in pairs or small groups (peer discussion). 1
Step C: Vote
Students submit answer using clicker
Step D: Whole-class Discussion
Instructor and students have follow-up discussion, usually emphasizing the “why” of correct
options and “why not” for incorrect options. The instructor should also make sure that any
residual issues or student questions from the discussion are explicitly addressed before moving
on.
Each of these steps plays important roles in students’ learning processes.
Step A: Question
By posing a question to the students, several “good” things happen:
i. Focuses students’ attention on (what you consider to be) the important ideas,
ii. Allows students to try applying ideas they just heard or read about,
iii. Allows students to build or make connections between ideas or representations,
iv. Gives students an opportunity to analyze a (new) situation or context, and
v. Gets students thinking about how to ask questions (that is, it explicitly models the process
of analyzing ideas or conclusions by asking questions and figuring out the answers).
vi. Prepares them to learn. Schwartz and Bransford have shown that when a person tries
to answer a question on a topic they do not know, even when they are quite unsuccessful in
obtaining a correct answer, they subsequently learn much more from an explanation of
the topic than if they hear the same explanation without preceding the explanation with
a question they attempt to answer. This means a clicker question can be valuable when it
precedes discussion of a topic.
When posing a question you might experiment with different ways of providing the answer
choices. Often it can be good to have the students think about the answer before the answer
options are revealed to them. This can discourage them from using test taking strategies to
eliminate possible multiple choice options, rather than reasoning through the question as you
intended. We have observed in some cases that not seeing the answer possibilities results
in students using their notes and making more of an effort to connect the question to prior
material. It can also be a good opportunity to make them practice drawing or diagramming
something before presenting them with drawings to choose from. Also, listening to student
discussions before possible answers are revealed can sometimes provide additional insights on
student reasoning and/or confusion.
Step B: Peer Discussion
Some instructors prefer that students always answer a clicker question individually (without
discussion), before discussing in groups and answering the question again. Other instructors
only ask students to answer individually before discussion some of the time, and other times
will save time by simply encouraging students to think about the question (but not to answer
it via clicker) before discussing with others. There is no evidence as to the superiority of either
approach. We do recommend having at least some questions that students have to first
answer on their own, particularly at the beginning of the term, so they do recognize they are
expected to think for themselves and not simply depend on getting the answers from others
around them. By watching and listening to the class, it is relatively easy to tell if most students
are first analyzing the questions independently and expressing their own ideas, instead of
automatically accepting the answer of another student in the group. Based on what you
observe, you can readily change how the responses are collected to ensure this happens. We
recommend never showing students the results before the end of the voting period, and not
showing students the voting results of the class before peer discussion unless the results show
a very wide distribution of opinions with no answer being the obvious favourite. Otherwise,
many students will simply change their answer to go with the majority. On the other hand, if
there is a 50-50 split in votes, showing students that the question has provoked a split response is an excellent motivator for productive discussion.
What does peer discussion do for students, instructors, and the classroom environment?
Peer discussion:
i. Actively engages students in thinking about and discussing the concept/skill/idea;
ii. Improves both their understanding and their ability to communicate technical ideas;
iii. Gives students an opportunity to explain and defend their reasoning, and analyze others’
reasoning (to engage in scientific argument);
iv. Gives you a chance to hear what students are thinking (listen in on group discussions);
v. Gives students a chance to voice their questions and hear those of others (realize they are
not alone in struggling to master the material);vi. Allows students to get help from others to clear up items of confusion; for example, misunderstanding of a technical term that they may have but others around them do not;
vii. Builds collegial intellectual atmosphere among students (which promotes learning);
viii. Helps students learn technical terminology by using it in discussion.
Step C: Vote
Voting on an answer:
i. Gets students to commit to an answer and engages them in knowing the right answer.
(They are vested in the outcome, but in a peer-anonymous way);
ii. Provides feedback to faculty (Have the students mastered this idea? Should I move on or
spend more time on this topic?);
iii. Provides feedback to students (Am I understanding this? How does my understanding
compare to the rest of the class?)
Step D: Whole-class Discussion
After voting, the instructor leads a whole-class discussion and provides wrap-up for the
question. This wrap-up:
i. Allows you and students to hear students’ reasoning for various answers;
ii. Gives students the chance to hear and respond to each others ideas;
iii. Gives you the opportunity to emphasize and support reasoning as important (“Why might
someone pick B? Why is that answer tempting?”, or “Why did your group choose B?” are
both somewhat less threatening ways to get students to offer their thinking. However,
also telling students they are expected to come up with reasons in their peer discussions,
and then calling on students in an obviously random manner to offer up reasons of their
group has proven to be effective. This further encourages students to share and critique
their reasons during peer group discussions.);
iv. Allows you to give feedback to the students on their thinking that is both timely and
specific, the two elements that research has shown are essential for pedagogically useful
feedback;
v. Promotes understanding of the reasons why an answer choice is correct. If discussion
focuses upon the thinking associated with right and wrong options, then students will
learn both about the reasoning underlying the correct answer, and what is wrong with
incorrect reasoning. (It is important to make sure this happens – correct reasoning for an
answer is NOT typically obvious to students, even for many questions that nearly all of
them answer correctly.). Finally, this helps students recognize that understanding rather
than merely getting a correct answer is what is important both in the course and in the use
of clicker questions. Data from our end of term student surveys on clicker use support this.
vi. Can generate additional questions revealing difficulties that you had not recognized, or
introduce elements or applications of the topic that students find interesting and useful.
3. WRITING EFFECTIVE QUESTIONS
Once an instructor has embraced the idea of interactive teaching, having good questions is
the single most important element for having a successful class using clickers. Ideally you
would like a question that students will interpret properly and will see as interesting and
challenging, will stimulate students to want to hear and analyze the ideas of their classmates,
will shape student thinking in desired ways, will reveal unanticipated student difficulties or
interpretations, and will accurately reveal whether or not students are mastering the material.
However, a question can be more than adequate without achieving all these goals, and it is
hard to predict which questions will be great until you try them, so it is best not to spend too
long agonizing over creating the perfect question.
By far the most common failing is to make questions that are too easy. In this situation, students often see the questions as simply a quiz to keep them awake, and they are annoyed that they had to spend money on clickers only for this purpose. There is also some indication that,
in the absence of any other form of feedback, easy questions may mislead students as to the difficulty of the questions they would expect to see on the exam. In extensive surveys of students in many different classes, students overwhelmingly see challenging questions as the
most useful for their learning. Our observations have also supported the conclusions that such questions result in greater learning.
10) Relate different representations (graphical, mathematical, …)
While each mode can be useful in the right circumstances, those in bold above are the uses
that we have seen the largest direct impact on learning and the uses that students report they
find of most value. Not surprisingly, these reflect the deepest mastery of a subject and hence
have been shown to be the most challenging for students to learn. We recommend that the
majority of questions fall into these bolded categories.
2. RECOMMENDED APPROACH TO USING CLICKERS
For questions of the bolded type, we believe it is best to usually follow the following steps:
Step A: Question
Instructor poses the question, often with some remark about its purpose.
Step B: Peer Discussion
Students have time to think about the question individually (possibly answering individually
with clicker), and then discuss the question in pairs or small groups (peer discussion). 1
Step C: Vote
Students submit answer using clicker
Step D: Whole-class Discussion
Instructor and students have follow-up discussion, usually emphasizing the “why” of correct
options and “why not” for incorrect options. The instructor should also make sure that any
residual issues or student questions from the discussion are explicitly addressed before moving
on.
Each of these steps plays important roles in students’ learning processes.
Step A: Question
By posing a question to the students, several “good” things happen:
i. Focuses students’ attention on (what you consider to be) the important ideas,
ii. Allows students to try applying ideas they just heard or read about,
iii. Allows students to build or make connections between ideas or representations,
iv. Gives students an opportunity to analyze a (new) situation or context, and
v. Gets students thinking about how to ask questions (that is, it explicitly models the process
of analyzing ideas or conclusions by asking questions and figuring out the answers).
vi. Prepares them to learn. Schwartz and Bransford have shown that when a person tries
to answer a question on a topic they do not know, even when they are quite unsuccessful in
obtaining a correct answer, they subsequently learn much more from an explanation of
the topic than if they hear the same explanation without preceding the explanation with
a question they attempt to answer. This means a clicker question can be valuable when it
precedes discussion of a topic.
When posing a question you might experiment with different ways of providing the answer
choices. Often it can be good to have the students think about the answer before the answer
options are revealed to them. This can discourage them from using test taking strategies to
eliminate possible multiple choice options, rather than reasoning through the question as you
intended. We have observed in some cases that not seeing the answer possibilities results
in students using their notes and making more of an effort to connect the question to prior
material. It can also be a good opportunity to make them practice drawing or diagramming
something before presenting them with drawings to choose from. Also, listening to student
discussions before possible answers are revealed can sometimes provide additional insights on
student reasoning and/or confusion.
Step B: Peer Discussion
Some instructors prefer that students always answer a clicker question individually (without
discussion), before discussing in groups and answering the question again. Other instructors
only ask students to answer individually before discussion some of the time, and other times
will save time by simply encouraging students to think about the question (but not to answer
it via clicker) before discussing with others. There is no evidence as to the superiority of either
approach. We do recommend having at least some questions that students have to first
answer on their own, particularly at the beginning of the term, so they do recognize they are
expected to think for themselves and not simply depend on getting the answers from others
around them. By watching and listening to the class, it is relatively easy to tell if most students
are first analyzing the questions independently and expressing their own ideas, instead of
automatically accepting the answer of another student in the group. Based on what you
observe, you can readily change how the responses are collected to ensure this happens. We
recommend never showing students the results before the end of the voting period, and not
showing students the voting results of the class before peer discussion unless the results show
a very wide distribution of opinions with no answer being the obvious favourite. Otherwise,
many students will simply change their answer to go with the majority. On the other hand, if
there is a 50-50 split in votes, showing students that the question has provoked a split response is an excellent motivator for productive discussion.
What does peer discussion do for students, instructors, and the classroom environment?
Peer discussion:
i. Actively engages students in thinking about and discussing the concept/skill/idea;
ii. Improves both their understanding and their ability to communicate technical ideas;
iii. Gives students an opportunity to explain and defend their reasoning, and analyze others’
reasoning (to engage in scientific argument);
iv. Gives you a chance to hear what students are thinking (listen in on group discussions);
v. Gives students a chance to voice their questions and hear those of others (realize they are
not alone in struggling to master the material);vi. Allows students to get help from others to clear up items of confusion; for example, misunderstanding of a technical term that they may have but others around them do not;
vii. Builds collegial intellectual atmosphere among students (which promotes learning);
viii. Helps students learn technical terminology by using it in discussion.
Step C: Vote
Voting on an answer:
i. Gets students to commit to an answer and engages them in knowing the right answer.
(They are vested in the outcome, but in a peer-anonymous way);
ii. Provides feedback to faculty (Have the students mastered this idea? Should I move on or
spend more time on this topic?);
iii. Provides feedback to students (Am I understanding this? How does my understanding
compare to the rest of the class?)
Step D: Whole-class Discussion
After voting, the instructor leads a whole-class discussion and provides wrap-up for the
question. This wrap-up:
i. Allows you and students to hear students’ reasoning for various answers;
ii. Gives students the chance to hear and respond to each others ideas;
iii. Gives you the opportunity to emphasize and support reasoning as important (“Why might
someone pick B? Why is that answer tempting?”, or “Why did your group choose B?” are
both somewhat less threatening ways to get students to offer their thinking. However,
also telling students they are expected to come up with reasons in their peer discussions,
and then calling on students in an obviously random manner to offer up reasons of their
group has proven to be effective. This further encourages students to share and critique
their reasons during peer group discussions.);
iv. Allows you to give feedback to the students on their thinking that is both timely and
specific, the two elements that research has shown are essential for pedagogically useful
feedback;
v. Promotes understanding of the reasons why an answer choice is correct. If discussion
focuses upon the thinking associated with right and wrong options, then students will
learn both about the reasoning underlying the correct answer, and what is wrong with
incorrect reasoning. (It is important to make sure this happens – correct reasoning for an
answer is NOT typically obvious to students, even for many questions that nearly all of
them answer correctly.). Finally, this helps students recognize that understanding rather
than merely getting a correct answer is what is important both in the course and in the use
of clicker questions. Data from our end of term student surveys on clicker use support this.
vi. Can generate additional questions revealing difficulties that you had not recognized, or
introduce elements or applications of the topic that students find interesting and useful.
3. WRITING EFFECTIVE QUESTIONS
Once an instructor has embraced the idea of interactive teaching, having good questions is
the single most important element for having a successful class using clickers. Ideally you
would like a question that students will interpret properly and will see as interesting and
challenging, will stimulate students to want to hear and analyze the ideas of their classmates,
will shape student thinking in desired ways, will reveal unanticipated student difficulties or
interpretations, and will accurately reveal whether or not students are mastering the material.
However, a question can be more than adequate without achieving all these goals, and it is
hard to predict which questions will be great until you try them, so it is best not to spend too
long agonizing over creating the perfect question.
By far the most common failing is to make questions that are too easy. In this situation, students often see the questions as simply a quiz to keep them awake, and they are annoyed that they had to spend money on clickers only for this purpose. There is also some indication that,
in the absence of any other form of feedback, easy questions may mislead students as to the difficulty of the questions they would expect to see on the exam. In extensive surveys of students in many different classes, students overwhelmingly see challenging questions as the
most useful for their learning. Our observations have also supported the conclusions that such questions result in greater learning.
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