Clicker Resource Guide
An Instructors Guide to the Eective Use of Personal Response Systems (Clickers) in Teaching
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Clickers are not a magic bullet – they are not necessarily useful as an end in themselves.
Clickers become useful when you have a clear idea as to what you want to achieve with
them, and the questions are designed to improve student engagement and instructor-student
interaction.
• What clickers do provide is a way to rapidly collect an answer to a question from every
student; an answer for which they are individually accountable. This allows rapid reliable
feedback to both you and the students.
• Used properly, clickers can tell you when students are disengaged and/or confused, why this
has happened, and can help you to fix the situation.
• The best questions focus on concepts you feel are particularly important and involve
challenging ideas with multiple plausible answers that reveal student confusion and generate
spirited student discussion.
• A common mistake is to use clicker questions that are too easy. Students value challenging
questions more and learn more from them. Students often learn the most from a question
that they get wrong.
• For challenging questions, students should be given some time to think about the clicker
question on their own, and then discuss with their peers.
• Good clicker questions and discussion result in deeper, more numerous questions from a
much wider range of students than in traditional lecture.
• Listening to the student discussions will allow you to much better understand and address
student thinking.
• Even though you will sacrifice some coverage of content in class, students will be more
engaged and learn much more of what you do cover.
• When clickers are used correctly, students overwhelmingly support their use and say they
help their learning.
INTRODUCTION
Why is it that every faculty member who is experienced with using clickers effectively swears by
them?
Why are the students in classes using well-implemented clicker questions dramatically more
engaged and asking more numerous and deeper questions?
Why do the students in these classes overwhelmingly recommend that clickers should be used in all
lecture classes?
This guide was written to help instructors understand the answers to these questions, and to
help them use personal response systems (“clickers”) in their classes in the most comfortable
and pedagogically effective manner. The authors are involved in the Science Education
Initiative at the University of Colorado and the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the
University of British Columbia. We have supported many different instructors as they
“This is great fun. My worst day using clickers is about as good as my best day using standard lectures [in the past].”
introduced or refined the use of clickers into their courses, several of us have used clickers
extensively in teaching, and we have observed a large number of classes – both those which
use clickers and those which do not. Particularly relevant to this guide were our numerous
observations of some expert “clicker-based” instructors. We have also carried out a number of
studies on clicker use and their impact on students and on student opinions about their use.
The first point about clickers that must be emphasized is that clickers in themselves are not a
solution to anything. Like a chalkboard, they can only serve to extend the capabilities of the
instructor. Although clickers can be, and unfortunately often are, used primarily to encourage
attendance, they are most effective when they are used expressly to facilitate intellectual
engagement of the student and communication between student and instructor. When used
this way, the amplification of a good instructor’s capabilities can transform a classroom and
result in dramatically improved student learning, particularly in large classes. In the words of
one instructor known to be an exceptionally good traditional lecturer when half way through
his first term of using clickers: “This is great fun. My worst day using clickers is about as good as my best day using standard lectures [in the past].”
An experienced insightful instructor when giving a traditional lecture can tell when many of
the students are not engaged and can often tell when students do not understand the material.
However, it is more difficult to know why they are disengaged and/or confused, and how to fix
these problems. Clickers, when used well, can provide the why and how to fix for experienced
instructors. For other instructors, in addition to serving those functions, clickers can also help them know much better when students are disengaged and confused.
It is essential to recognize that these benefits do not happen automatically when one
introduces clickers to the classroom. These desirable outcomes are only achieved when the
instructor thinks carefully about his or her instructional goals and how clicker questions and
related discussion can help achieve those goals. In the remainder of this document, we will
discuss the use of “clicker-questions” and how they can be used in educationally effective ways.
These questions are normally multiple choice questions posed to the class, where each student
in the class has their own clicker. Students register their answer by pushing the appropriate
button, and a computer records their response. A histogram of responses can be shown to the
whole class.
It can take some time to tap the full potential of clickers in the classroom. We have commonly
seen instructors follow the following progression as they learn to use clickers effectively:
Seeing [the response from clickers] is often an “aha”
moment for the instructor. They realize how they might use clicker questions in a new way to better promote student thinking and learning...Students recognize that they must come to class prepared and must keep up with material throughout the semester, as they must analyze
and respond to questions on a daily basis.
Stage 1) Asking simple, primarily factual, questions as a starting point. These questions
are often simple quizzes on material just covered in lecture, or questions derived from the
textbook or textbook instructor’s guide. Little discussion amongst students about the
questions is encouraged or needed, and the great majority (>80%) of the students get the
question correct. There is little follow up discussion to the question by the instructor. This
type of question often appears to be driven by instructor’s concern that asking more difficult
questions would make students feel uncomfortable at missing the answer. The primary impact
of the clickers on lecture is improving attendance (assuming students get points if they answer
the questions). On our surveys, students indicate they see much less value to this type of use
than clickers being used as in Stages 2 or 3 below.
We have seen some faculty members who are new to clickers suddenly switch from the simple
usage of clickers in Stage 1 to the more effective approach in Stages 2 or 3 after the following
experience. Stimulated by unexpectedly poor performance on an exam question or just by
accident, the instructor will create a question that is more challenging. This question creates a large split in responses that is followed by a burst of discussion among the students as to which answer is correct and why. Seeing such a response is often an “aha” moment for the instructor.
They realize how they might use clicker questions in a new way to better promote student
thinking and learning. They then move to the next stage of clicker question use.
Stage 2) Asking more challenging conceptual questions, or questions where the answer
is not obvious and critical points could be argued. There is a substantial spread in student
responses and significant student-student discussion of the question is encouraged, with
follow up discussion by the instructor. There are occasional changes in the planned lecture to
address student difficulties that are revealed by the clicker question or in response to student
questions generated in discussion.
Stage 3) Lecture is structured around a set of challenging clicker questions that largely
embody the material students are to learn. Students are required to prepare for class by
reading or carrying out assignments ahead of time, and little class time is spent in providing
information to students that is accessible in the textbook or online notes. Students are
organized into 3-4 person discussion groups so that all students must discuss the questions,
and student reasoning for their answer choices are elicited and analyzed following the
question. A significant portion of the class time is devoted to discussion of students’
thinking and questions that are revealed and raised during this process. Under the best of
circumstances, clicker questions are designed so that student questions actually introduce the
next intended topic (and may even constitute the next clicker question posed to the class).
Students recognize that they must come to class prepared and must keep up with material
throughout the semester, as they must analyze and respond to questions on a daily basis.
USING CLICKERS IN THE CLASSROOM
1. TYPES OF CLICKER QUESTIONS
Clicker questions can serve many purposes – below are some common uses:
1) Quiz on the reading assigned in preparation for the class
2) Test recall of lecture point
3) Do a calculation or choose next step in a complex calculation
4) Survey students to determine background or opinions
5) Elicit/reveal pre-existing thinking
6) Test conceptual understanding
7) Apply ideas in new context/explore implications
8) Predict results of lecture demo, experiment, or simulation, video, etc.
9) Draw on knowledge from everyday life
Clicker Resource Guide
An Instructors Guide to the Eective Use of Personal Response Systems (Clickers) in Teaching
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Clickers are not a magic bullet – they are not necessarily useful as an end in themselves.
Clickers become useful when you have a clear idea as to what you want to achieve with
them, and the questions are designed to improve student engagement and instructor-student
interaction.
• What clickers do provide is a way to rapidly collect an answer to a question from every
student; an answer for which they are individually accountable. This allows rapid reliable
feedback to both you and the students.
• Used properly, clickers can tell you when students are disengaged and/or confused, why this
has happened, and can help you to fix the situation.
• The best questions focus on concepts you feel are particularly important and involve
challenging ideas with multiple plausible answers that reveal student confusion and generate
spirited student discussion.
• A common mistake is to use clicker questions that are too easy. Students value challenging
questions more and learn more from them. Students often learn the most from a question
that they get wrong.
• For challenging questions, students should be given some time to think about the clicker
question on their own, and then discuss with their peers.
• Good clicker questions and discussion result in deeper, more numerous questions from a
much wider range of students than in traditional lecture.
• Listening to the student discussions will allow you to much better understand and address
student thinking.
• Even though you will sacrifice some coverage of content in class, students will be more
engaged and learn much more of what you do cover.
• When clickers are used correctly, students overwhelmingly support their use and say they
help their learning.
INTRODUCTION
Why is it that every faculty member who is experienced with using clickers effectively swears by
them?
Why are the students in classes using well-implemented clicker questions dramatically more
engaged and asking more numerous and deeper questions?
Why do the students in these classes overwhelmingly recommend that clickers should be used in all
lecture classes?
This guide was written to help instructors understand the answers to these questions, and to
help them use personal response systems (“clickers”) in their classes in the most comfortable
and pedagogically effective manner. The authors are involved in the Science Education
Initiative at the University of Colorado and the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the
University of British Columbia. We have supported many different instructors as they
“This is great fun. My worst day using clickers is about as good as my best day using standard lectures [in the past].”
introduced or refined the use of clickers into their courses, several of us have used clickers
extensively in teaching, and we have observed a large number of classes – both those which
use clickers and those which do not. Particularly relevant to this guide were our numerous
observations of some expert “clicker-based” instructors. We have also carried out a number of
studies on clicker use and their impact on students and on student opinions about their use.
The first point about clickers that must be emphasized is that clickers in themselves are not a
solution to anything. Like a chalkboard, they can only serve to extend the capabilities of the
instructor. Although clickers can be, and unfortunately often are, used primarily to encourage
attendance, they are most effective when they are used expressly to facilitate intellectual
engagement of the student and communication between student and instructor. When used
this way, the amplification of a good instructor’s capabilities can transform a classroom and
result in dramatically improved student learning, particularly in large classes. In the words of
one instructor known to be an exceptionally good traditional lecturer when half way through
his first term of using clickers: “This is great fun. My worst day using clickers is about as good as my best day using standard lectures [in the past].”
An experienced insightful instructor when giving a traditional lecture can tell when many of
the students are not engaged and can often tell when students do not understand the material.
However, it is more difficult to know why they are disengaged and/or confused, and how to fix
these problems. Clickers, when used well, can provide the why and how to fix for experienced
instructors. For other instructors, in addition to serving those functions, clickers can also help them know much better when students are disengaged and confused.
It is essential to recognize that these benefits do not happen automatically when one
introduces clickers to the classroom. These desirable outcomes are only achieved when the
instructor thinks carefully about his or her instructional goals and how clicker questions and
related discussion can help achieve those goals. In the remainder of this document, we will
discuss the use of “clicker-questions” and how they can be used in educationally effective ways.
These questions are normally multiple choice questions posed to the class, where each student
in the class has their own clicker. Students register their answer by pushing the appropriate
button, and a computer records their response. A histogram of responses can be shown to the
whole class.
It can take some time to tap the full potential of clickers in the classroom. We have commonly
seen instructors follow the following progression as they learn to use clickers effectively:
Seeing [the response from clickers] is often an “aha”
moment for the instructor. They realize how they might use clicker questions in a new way to better promote student thinking and learning...Students recognize that they must come to class prepared and must keep up with material throughout the semester, as they must analyze
and respond to questions on a daily basis.
Stage 1) Asking simple, primarily factual, questions as a starting point. These questions
are often simple quizzes on material just covered in lecture, or questions derived from the
textbook or textbook instructor’s guide. Little discussion amongst students about the
questions is encouraged or needed, and the great majority (>80%) of the students get the
question correct. There is little follow up discussion to the question by the instructor. This
type of question often appears to be driven by instructor’s concern that asking more difficult
questions would make students feel uncomfortable at missing the answer. The primary impact
of the clickers on lecture is improving attendance (assuming students get points if they answer
the questions). On our surveys, students indicate they see much less value to this type of use
than clickers being used as in Stages 2 or 3 below.
We have seen some faculty members who are new to clickers suddenly switch from the simple
usage of clickers in Stage 1 to the more effective approach in Stages 2 or 3 after the following
experience. Stimulated by unexpectedly poor performance on an exam question or just by
accident, the instructor will create a question that is more challenging. This question creates a large split in responses that is followed by a burst of discussion among the students as to which answer is correct and why. Seeing such a response is often an “aha” moment for the instructor.
They realize how they might use clicker questions in a new way to better promote student
thinking and learning. They then move to the next stage of clicker question use.
Stage 2) Asking more challenging conceptual questions, or questions where the answer
is not obvious and critical points could be argued. There is a substantial spread in student
responses and significant student-student discussion of the question is encouraged, with
follow up discussion by the instructor. There are occasional changes in the planned lecture to
address student difficulties that are revealed by the clicker question or in response to student
questions generated in discussion.
Stage 3) Lecture is structured around a set of challenging clicker questions that largely
embody the material students are to learn. Students are required to prepare for class by
reading or carrying out assignments ahead of time, and little class time is spent in providing
information to students that is accessible in the textbook or online notes. Students are
organized into 3-4 person discussion groups so that all students must discuss the questions,
and student reasoning for their answer choices are elicited and analyzed following the
question. A significant portion of the class time is devoted to discussion of students’
thinking and questions that are revealed and raised during this process. Under the best of
circumstances, clicker questions are designed so that student questions actually introduce the
next intended topic (and may even constitute the next clicker question posed to the class).
Students recognize that they must come to class prepared and must keep up with material
throughout the semester, as they must analyze and respond to questions on a daily basis.
USING CLICKERS IN THE CLASSROOM
1. TYPES OF CLICKER QUESTIONS
Clicker questions can serve many purposes – below are some common uses:
1) Quiz on the reading assigned in preparation for the class
2) Test recall of lecture point
3) Do a calculation or choose next step in a complex calculation
4) Survey students to determine background or opinions
5) Elicit/reveal pre-existing thinking
6) Test conceptual understanding
7) Apply ideas in new context/explore implications
8) Predict results of lecture demo, experiment, or simulation, video, etc.
9) Draw on knowledge from everyday life
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