Are Clickers Right For You and Your Classroom?

Clickers are also called Classroom Response Systems. The clickers look like remote controls. Clickers are anonymous to the whole group, but can be identified by number by the teacher/facilitator.

The benefits of utilizing a clicker provides for:
1. Engagement,
2. Increased interest,
3. Increased discussion.

Using Clickers to Access Data:
Benefits
1.Immediate feedback for both teachers and students.
2.Teachers are able to evaluate and identify learning gaps. Clickers allow for informal assessments.
3.Presented using a gamers approach with graphics, which is ideal for digital natives lending them to have a more postive outlook on materials presented.

Research done by Margie Martyn concluded that there wasn't any significant change in outcomes between students who utilized clickers and others who didn't, which resulted in questions related to Return on Investment. This can only lead one to suggest that there are other links to student success while utilizing clickers and it could be tied to other aspects of teaching pedagogy.

Using Clickers to Access Data:
Drawbacks/Concerns
1. Lack of paper trail for disputing answers
2. Cheating- A student could use someone elses'clicker
3. Tech problems- Issues of a clicker not responding to a quesion and the question being marked wrong.

Reference:
Clickers retrived on October, 5, 2011 from http://ocio.osu.edu/elearning/toolbox/depth/clickers

Kelly K.G.Student Response Systems in the Psychology Classroom: A Beginners Guide. retrieved on October 5, 2011 from http://teachpsych.org/otrp/resources/kelly09.pdf

Martyn, Margin.(2007) Clickers in the Classroom: An Active Learning Approach.