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Clicker Resource Guide -- An Instructors' Guide to the Effective Use of Personal Response Systems (Clickers) in Teaching

Module by: CU Science Education Intiative, UBC Carl Weiman Science Education Initiative. E-mail the authors

Summary: The original of the Clicker Resource Guide, prepared by staff of the CU Science Education Initiative and the UBC Carl Wieman SEI. This module is a placeholder where the entire resource guide may be downloaded while the contents of the guide are being imported to the Connexions document language.

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, student-student interaction, 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 well, 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 well, students overwhelmingly support their use and say they help their learning.

Full Resource Guide PDF

You can download the original file of the Clicker Resource Guide, prepared by staff of the CU Science Education Initiative and the UBC Carl Wieman SEI using this link to the Clicker Resource Guide.

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