May 03, 2004
Remote Controlled Teaching
This story about teachers using "clickers" in university and law school class rooms is fascinating:
For these and other professors across the nation, the newest aid in the classroom is a small wireless keypad, linked to a computer. Students answer questions not by raising their hands but by punching buttons, with the results appearing on a screen in the front of the room.
Although some skeptics dismiss the devices as novelties more suited to a TV game show than a lecture hall, educators who use them say their classrooms come alive as never before. Shy students have no choice but to participate, the instructors say, and the know-it-alls lose their monopoly on the classroom dialogue.
TIMES NEWS TRACKER
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Colleges and Universities
Sociology
University of Cincinnati
Dartmouth College
Photographs by Mike Simons for The New York Times
Paul Caron, top, a professor at the University of Cincinnati, attributes a teacher-of-the-year award he won to the effective use of wireless keypads in his law class, above.
AUL CARON, a law professor at the University of Cincinnati, uses them to break through what he calls the "cone of silence" in his classroom. For Wendy Tietz, who teaches accounting at Kent State, they are a way to encourage teamwork and give credit for class participation. Melissa Wilde, a sociology professor at Indiana University, says they help her students feel a connection to the subject.For these and other professors across the nation, the newest aid in the classroom is a small wireless keypad, linked to a computer. Students answer questions not by raising their hands but by punching buttons, with the results appearing on a screen in the front of the room.
Although some skeptics dismiss the devices as novelties more suited to a TV game show than a lecture hall, educators who use them say their classrooms come alive as never before. Shy students have no choice but to participate, the instructors say, and the know-it-alls lose their monopoly on the classroom dialogue.
Professor Wilde has her students answer multiple-choice questions to gauge whether she is getting her point across and adjusts her lectures accordingly. "I can instantly see that three-quarters of the class doesn't get it," she said.
. . .The devices look and work much as a television remote does, sending infrared signals to a receiver at the front of the classroom. The receiver is connected to a computer, which tabulates and analyzes the responses. The data can be displayed by an overhead projector, incorporated into a spreadsheet or posted on a class Web site. Responses are anonymous among the students, but not to the teachers, who can identify students by the serial numbers of their clickers.
Doesn't that sound awesome? I'm not sure how these clickers would integrate with discussion; it seems a teacher would have to be well-prepared and very flexible to encourage regular, productive give-and-take of classroom discussion in addition to having time and opportunity to make the clickers useful. But that's just it; if teachers are forced to think a bit more about how they present information, and if students are constantly forced to engage, I bet learning improves. Maybe it's just the tech-fan in me, but I would have loved to try to make use of these things in the English classes I used to teach, and I would have loved to use them as a student in the past year of law school. [link via JD2B, which also links to an abstract of a forthcoming journal article on the subject of using clickers in law classrooms]
Posted by mowabb at May 3, 2004 06:17 AM | TrackBack