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There are five good reasons for
using a clicker in your classroom
1. Engage students in course
material through survey, pretest, practice, or review questions. The
resultant interactive classroom encourages students to come to class
prepared. However, to achieve this interaction and maintain
learners' attention, your questions must be challenging, thought
provoking, and/or stimulating.
2. Promote collaboration
with group exercises that require students to discuss and come to a
consensus, or with quiz questions that create a healthy
competition.
3. Provide instant
feedback to students regarding an issue, question,
or calculation. Consider using Gagnes Learning Theory, which incorporates
guidance, practice, and feedback into structured
lessons.
4. Increase
communication by discussing the answers and opinions
revealed in the SRS results. The SRS provides all students with an
equal opportunity to respond, and you can take advantage of their
responses to generate dialogue. Because the system can allow for
anonymous responses, it is effective for sensitive questions, such
as ethical, legal, and moral issues.
5. Collect data for research
or formative/summarative evaluation. The SRS can be used for
classroom assessments to measure students' preparation,
understanding and/or satisfaction. Some instructors administer pre-
and post- tests.
How CPS Clickers Engage
Students and Raise Test Scores.
1. Student
Activity
Stimulate the active processing of data,
information, ideas, viewpoints and beliefs at the same time as the
learning is taking place. The opportunity for participation and
contribution should be available equally to all students.
2. Communication
Create
an environment in the classroom where differences in answers and
opinions as a group can be observed and discussed immediately upon
tabulation while keeping each student’s specific response
anonymous.
3. Learning Desire and
Commitment
Provide students with frequent
indicators of both individual and class learning progress which
include comparisons with peer groups, previous classes and
demographic subgroups - to encourage positive effects of
self-assessment and competition among students.
4. Customized
Instruction
Provide the means for both
pre-planned questioning and ad-hoc questioning including the
opportunity for students themselves to initiate the solicitation of
class responses.
5. Data
Collection
Capture data on student responses
divided into demographic categories to facilitate course revisions,
to provide input to students on demographic positions, and to
provide information for personnel research into critical topic
areas.
In general, instructors can
create questions to measure comprehension and determine what
students already know or don’t know. This includes
• review of
topics presented in previous classes,
• review of material
covered in the homework, or
• a test for understanding of the
material covered in the last ten minutes.
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