Reference: Webking, R., & Valenzuela, F. (2006). Using audience response systems to develop critical thinking. In Banks, David A. (Ed.), Audience Response Systems in Higher Education: Applications and Cases. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.

Summary: Webking and Valenzuela describe ways they use classroom response systems in their political sciences courses at the University of Texas-El Paso to foster critical thinking through active participation and class discussions. After noting some commonly cited advantages of teaching with clickers—easier attendance and participation record-keeping, greater participation through anonymity and accountability, and the collection of data to inform agile teaching decisions—the authors provide several concrete examples of clicker questions they have found valuable for developing their students’ critical thinking skills.

The authors’ first example is a sequence of clicker questions that serve to guide students through a close reading of a few passages in the play Antigone. At one point in the play, Antigone makes a statement that seems to very clearly express her belief that obedience to the gods trumps obedience to the king. At another point, however, she makes a somewhat cryptic statement that calls this previous assertion into question. Webking and Valenzuela start with an understand-level question that asks students to clarify this second statement. They follow this with an application-level question asking students to identify a logical consequence of her cryptic statement, one which seems to run counter to her earlier statement about serving the gods. Their third question is an analysis-level one, and it asks students to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory statements by Antigone by identifying a hidden motivation of hers that makes her statements consistent.

Webking and Valenzuela also describe how they use a particularly challenging, analysis-level question about Plato’s Euthyphro. The question asks students to identify the central argument of a particular passage, one that deals with the relationship between justice and piousness. The question is one that Jean McGivney-Burelle would call a “horizontal question” since students answering the question are typically split evenly among three answer choices. Webking and Valenzuela note that one of the three popular responses can’t be supported by the text. Students who argue for this answer choice quickly realize that they were projecting their own perspectives on the text, not arguing from the text. This is a useful metacognitive moment for these students. The class discussion then focuses on the remaining two popular answer choices. Making sense of these two choices requires the students to grapple with categorical logic, the kind that is well-represented by Venn diagrams. Once the students have discussed their way to the correct answer, they realize the value of categorical logic in making sense of arguments like the ones Plato makes—another metacognitive moment.

The Plato example comes from one of the authors’ smaller, upper-level courses, and they assert that “it is in a smaller class that the [classroom response] system is at its best in encouraging discussion and precise argument.” They reach this conclusion, in part, because of the ability of their classroom response system to report to the instructor individual student responses to clicker questions as those responses are submitted. The authors use these individual, real-time results to guide their post-vote discussions, focusing on “groups which had difficulties in reaching consensus, students or groups which answered particularly quickly or particularly slowly, students who disagreed with their groups, students who changed their minds, and so on.” They argue that the ability to see individual, real-time results is important in leading effective post-vote discussions since it allows instructors to analyze “each student’s rational odyssey with each question.”

Also in the article are two examples of student perspective questions the authors use to motivate particular topics in their courses. In one example, they ask students to identify questions they aren’t likely to ask someone they’ve just met. Invariably, students identify the questions about religion and politics. The authors point out to students that one reasonable conclusion from this is that religion and politics are the least important things to know about when getting to know someone. This motivates students to want to learn why this social phenomenon exists.

Comments: This would be a great article to give a faculty member in political science or philosophy who’s interested in getting started teaching with clickers. Webking and Valenzuela provide a concrete, interesting example of a guided close reading of a text (Antigone) using clicker questions of increasing difficulty. This is a great model for instructors in the humanities and social sciences interested in helping their students develop critical thinking and close reading skills. I wish, however, that they had included some voting data in this example and had discussed how they use the results of these questions to guide discussions, as they did with their Plato example.

The Plato example is a great model of clicker use in text-based courses, too. One reason is that the approach Webking and Valenzuela use leads students to appreciate the nature of argument in their discipline. They write, “In time, and actually not very much time, students learn to care more about the strength of the argument than about having their initial position defended as right.” The authors present a useful list of options for leading these kinds of class discussions—focusing on groups that were conflicted, students who answered quickly or slowly, students who changed their minds, etc.

The authors assert that the quality of discussions they can foster depends on the availability to the instructor of real-time, individual voting data. Not all classroom response systems have this feature and, in my experience, instructors who have the option of looking at individual results as they come in don’t frequently take advantage of this option. I think that perhaps the availability of real-time, individual results isn’t as critical as Webking and Valenzuela assert. I’ll often have my students vote on a question individually, then discuss it in groups, then vote again. I’ll sometimes ask for a student who changed his or her mind from the first vote to the second vote to explain his or her reasoning. I can also see asking for a student who disagreed with his or her group to contribute to the post-vote discussion.  (That’s a nice idea, one that I’ll have to try soon!)

My approach, using the aggregate and not individual voting data, relies on students who fit certain profiles volunteering to share their perspectives with the class. Webking and Valenzuela’s approach doesn’t rely on volunteers, but it isn’t quite cold-calling, either, since they select students only after the students have had a chance to consider and respond to the clicker question. I’d like to call this “warm-calling” since the students have had a chance to warm up to the question and since the instructors aren’t calling on students without any knowledge of what those students might contribute to the discussion. I’m not familiar with many instructors who practice warm-calling.  If you do, I’d love to hear from you in the comments about your experiences doing so.

Image: “Coffin Sculpture of Antigone” by Flickr user Xuan Rosamanios / Creative Commons licensed

Although relatively few instructors in the humanities use clickers, if there’s one discipline in the humanities where clickers are starting to get some traction, it would be philosophy. I interviewed a couple of philosophy faculty members for my book (including Ron McClamrock of SUNY-Albany), and I’ve recently found a few online resources for using clickers in philosophy, listed below.

Why the particular interest in clickers among philosophy instructors? Perhaps it’s because some teach courses in logic, and these courses are often more like math courses (where clickers are more mainstream) than typical humanities courses. Perhaps it’s because some philosophy instructors teach relatively large classes–larger than is typical in English and language instruction, certainly–and clickers excel in large classes. However, I suspect the primary reason clickers have been adopted in philosophy is because philosophy instructors like to ask what I call “student perspective questions” in my book. These opinion and experience questions work beautifully in ethics courses, and I imagine they work well in other philosophy courses, as well.

On the Teaching Philosophy 101 site, John Immerwahr provides an introduction to teaching with clickers in philosophy courses.  He suggests a few uses of clickers that are of particular use in teaching philosophy.  For instance, he suggests asking students a few opinion questions at the beginning of a unit to surface their perspectives on the topic, helping them have a great stake in the discussion that follows.  He also suggests asking the same questions before and after a topic is discussed as a way to show students that “serious discussion of issues actually matters to how people think (a point which they sometimes don’t get initially).”

Immerwahr also stresses a point about clickers that is sometimes subtle: They can be used to generate “meta-conversations,” as he calls them.

Interestingly, the wording of the questions themselves often creates prompts for discussion. Student like to discuss why the class voted as it did, and people will sometimes make interesting distinctions (e.g., a student might say “If the question has said ‘can’ make a difference instead of ‘will’ make a difference, I would have voted differently,” which can then lead into another interesting discussion).

In my talks on teaching with clickers, I’ll often mention that the results display itself can generate useful discussion.  Asking students why the class voted as it did can often lead to productive discussions of assumptions students make about themselves and each other.

Immerwahr’s example also reminds me of another point I often make, that the wording on clicker questions need not be as precise as the wording on exam questions.  One reason is that if the question isn’t worded exactly right, an instructor can still make it work during the discussion of the question.  Another is that clicker questions can be modified and asked again based on student comments during discussion.  In Immerwahr’s example, for instance, the instructor could easily change “will” to “can” in the question and re-poll the students.

For an expanded version of Immerwahr’s introduction to clickers, read his Teaching Philosophy article, “Engaging the ‘Thumb Generation’ with Clickers.”  The article includes more discussion of the clicker uses mentioned above, as well as other uses, and features several sample questions.

And for even more resources on using clickers in philosophy instruction, visit the Peer Instruction in the Humanities project out of Monash University in Australia.  This site features a step-by-step guide to PI, advice on designing a PI lecture, a description of a sample PI lecture, examples of various types of clicker questions appropriate for this teaching context, and even a question bank organized by topic!  I’m very glad to know that there’s a humanities clicker question bank out there to complement existing question banks in the sciences.

A little while back, Jeff McClurken directed me (via Twitter, naturally) to a 2006 blog post by Gardner Campbell describing an APGAR test for class meetings.  In spite of having read Gardner’s work for a couple of years now, I hadn’t seen this idea until Jeff mentioned it as a way to use clickers to help students assess their readiness for a class session.  I think it’s a great idea, so I wanted to mention it here.  (By the way, this is yet another example of how Twitter has led to good things!)

In 1953, physician Virginia Apgar published a test designed to capture a newborn baby’s health in a score between 0 and 10.  The test measures five aspects of a newborn’s health: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration–a convenient mnemonic device based on the inventor’s name.  Each aspect is given a score of 0, 1, or 2, yielding a total score between 0 and 10.  A baby with an APGAR of 10 appears to be in perfect health; a baby with an APGAR of 4 or lower is not doing well.

Gardner’s idea was to devise an APGAR test that students would take before a class session as a way to self-assess their readiness for that class session.  He’s put his five APGAR questions in a slide available on Slideshare with a photo of Dr. Apgar herself:

As Gardner suggested in his post, you could easily ask these questions using clickers, either as five separate clicker questions or as one question asking students to report their total score.  Most clicker systems will let you see the average of the responses for a rating question, so you could quickly see the average APGAR score for your entire class.

Why might you use this APGAR test for students?

• As Gardner points out, just sharing these questions helps to communicate to students your expectations for them.  I frequently hear from students and instructors that mismatched expectations lead to all kinds of frustrations, so clarifying your expectations for your students out-of-class studying can be very helpful.
• Furthermore, having students assess their own readiness for class creates the opportunity for a “metacognitive moment” in which students learn something about their own learning.  As a student considers these questions, she is motivated to consider how the five actions described in the questions might (or might not) help her learn.  As Steven Greenlaw points out, this can help students, particularly first-year students, become more intentional learners, which is a good thing.
• On the instructor side of things, the results of a class’ APGAR test can provide useful information on students’ readiness for class, information that can be acted upon immediately.  If the class average is low, you’ll have to make some on-the-fly decisions about how to respond to the fact that your students aren’t that ready for class.  If the class average is high, you can look forward to some engaging discussion that day!

One potential problem with giving your students an APGAR test is that students might over- or under-report their readiness for class.  Perhaps they don’t want you to think they’re slacking off, so they rate themselves high.  Or perhaps they think you’ll go easy on them during class if they rate themselves low.  So you would have to take their responses with a grain of salt, considering what social dynamics might be at play that would lead them to fib a little on their scores.  The fact that clickers allow students to respond anonymously to questions like these helps, certainly, since they won’t be as subject to peer pressure when responding.

Have you tried something like this with clickers?  If so, how did it go for you?  If not, does this sound promising?

Here are a couple more clicker questions I tried out in my cryptography class recently.

“Cryptography was the decisive factor in the Allied victory in World War Two.”

1. Strongly agree
2. Agree
3. Disagree
4. Strongly disagree

Surprisingly, most students agreed or strongly agreed with this statement.  Arguments for this statement focused either on the tactical role of information gained via code-breaking in particularly important battles (e.g. Midway) or the more generally important role of military intelligence.  Arguments against this statement included the assertion that cryptography may have shortened the duration of the war but did not change its outcome.

Given the lopsided results, I asked for those who agreed with the statement to provide some reasons for their answers.  After hearing from a few students, I then asked those who disagreed with the statement to argue their side.  This didn’t quite generate the discussion I had hoped it would, so I asked those who strongly agreed with the statement to state their reasons.  This back and forth went well enough, but it probably would have worked better had I asked the students to respond more directly to each other’s arguments.  Had the results been more split, this approach would likely have worked very well.  As it was, it probably would have helped for me to play devil’s advocate more actively by defending the “disagree” response.

As you can tell, the question above reads like an opinion question but really calls for critical thinking!

Here are two more clicker questions that go together and worked very well:

Singh writes on page 149 that “the creative codebreaker must ‘perforce commune daily with dark spirits to accomplish his feats of mental ju-jitsu.’”  Which is more important to successful codebreaking–logic or creativity?

1. Logic
2. Creativity
3. Both are equally important.

How would you have answered the previous question before you took this course?

1. Logic
2. Creativity
3. Both are equally important.

I only had a couple of minutes for these two questions, which didn’t provide much time for discussion.  However, the results of the two questions were very different, which was fascinating!  For the first question, most students said that both logic and creativity are equally important in breaking codes.  For the second question, most students indicated they would have said logic was more important than creativity.  The shift was fairly dramatic–over 60% of students chose “both” on the first question and similar numbers chose “logic” on the second question.

I asked my students why their perspectives changed since the course began.  They indicated that learning about the invention of ciphers as well as understanding how difficult it has been and is to break ciphers, their appreciation of the role of creativity has grown.  Inventing a new, secure cipher takes a creative act, so breaking that cipher also takes creativity.  Their own experiences breaking codes this semester in the problem sets have reinforced the notion that creativity is essential.

I hope that this question provided my students with a “metacognitive moment”–a chance to step back and consider what (and, to some extent, how) they have learned in this course.  The dramatic difference in the results of this question likely enhanced this “learning about learning” to the extent that it occurred.

Have you used clickers to help create “metacognitive moments” in your teaching?

I had hoped that my second podcast episode would follow the first one a little more closely in time, but the spring semester got away from me, particularly with the book coming out in February.  However, I’ve got a great interview for you this time around.

This episode features an interview with Kelly Cline, associate professor of mathematics at Carroll College in Montana.  Kelly and two of his colleagues at Carroll, Holly Zullo and Mark Parker, are principal investigators for a National Science Foundation project called Project Math Quest.  Kelly and his collaborators have written and tested clicker questions for linear algebra and differential equations courses, and they’ve made their question bank–consisting of hundreds of questions–available online.

In this interview, Kelly talks about the ways that he uses clickers and classroom voting, as well as his energy and enthusiasm, to motivate his students to engage meaningfully with mathematical concepts and logical thinking in the classroom.  He also talks about elements of effective clicker questions, as well as how he has modified his approach to teaching to include more active learning elements while still covering all the content he needs to in his courses.

Click the following link to download and listen to the interview:

Podcast #2 – An Interview with Kelly Cline [41:14]

Links:

• Kelly Cline’s home page
• Project Math QUEST

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Here’s part two of student participation week.  I’ll be blogging all week about recent research on the impact of teaching with clickers on student participation in class.

Reference: Lucas, A. (2009). Using peer instruction and i>clickers to enhance student participation in calculus. PRIMUS, 19(3), 219-231.

Summary: In this article, Lucas assesses his use of clicker-facilitated peer instruction in his calculus courses.  Lucas has his students respond individually to clicker questions, then displays the results to the class (as a histogram), then has the students discuss the questions in small groups prior to a second vote and classwide discussion.  His grading scheme sounds high-stakes initially, since students receive only half-credit for wrong answers, but since he only uses clicker grades when students’ numerical course grades fall between two letter grades, the stakes are actually fairly low.  (According to the article I discussed yesterday, James (2006), this should encourage balanced peer discussion.)

There was a moderately strong correlation between students’ clicker scores and their overall course grades (r=0.57).  Lucas notes that this means that instructors might take advantage of clicker scores early in the semester to identify students who are struggling in a course.  Homework scores are not only more effort to obtain but were correlated less strongly with course performance in Lucas’ case.

Based on end-of-semester student surveys in two calculus courses, one featuring clicker-facilitated peer instruction and the other taught in a more traditional manner, students who participate in peer instruction activities place a greater value on student-student learning (as opposed to instructor-student learning) than students who do not.

Lucas was interested in exploring the impact of the instructions he gave his students on their participation in peer discussion.  He videotaped two tables of eight students each discussing a particular question.  One table was given no instructions; the other was told to first discuss the question in detail in pairs using pencil and paper to explain their answers to each other and then discuss the question with other students at their tables.

The students that were given no instructions deferred to one of the “high status” students at the table even though that student was incorrect instead of defending their own, correct answers.  Lucas defined a “high status” student for the purposes of this student as one who ended up with a B+ or higher in the course, assuming “that students receiving high grades were regarded by their peers as having higher status.”  Furthermore, Lucas states that at this table, “there was very little mathematical dialogue” in the time allocated for discussion.

In contrast, at the table where students were given instructions to discuss the question in pairs using pencil and paper, the video indicated that the students spent most of the discussion time doing exactly that.  Furthermore, for the two pairs at the table that consisted of one high status student and one non-high-status student, the non-high-status students contributed to the pair discussions.  In each case, both students were initially incorrect (with the same wrong answers) but through balanced discussions that involved mathematical reasoning communicated in writing were able to arrive at the correct solution.

Lucas concludes that the instructions given to students prior to peer instruction impact the nature of the peer discussions and that in a math class, encouraging students to discuss clicker questions using pencil and paper enhances the quality of those discussions.

Comments: James (2006), the subject of yesterday’s post, argues that the grading schemes used with clicker questions impacts the nature of the discussions that occur during peer instruction time.  Lucas here argues that the instructions teachers give students for peer instruction time are also important.  I think Lucas is onto something here, although his argument is weakened by the fact that he only analyzed the discussions among two groups of students about a single clicker question.  Further studies are necessary, I think.  It would be fairly easy for Lucas and other instructors to vary the instructions they give students prior to peer instruction, then see which sets of instructions lead to greater convergence to correct answers from the first vote to the second vote.

I think Lucas’ findings were enhanced by his use of video, however.  Video- or audio-taping student conversations provides a useful tool for better understanding the nature and dynamics of peer discussions.  James’ results are certainly stronger because of his analysis of such audio-recordings.

There are other factors that might impact the nature of discussions during peer instruction time, of course.  Eric Mazur and Nathaniel Lasry, in particular, have mentioned the display of the results of the initial clicker vote as one potentially important factor.  If there’s consensus around a single response (right or wrong), students seeing the histogram might assume that the popular answer is the correct one and thus, assuming they understand the correct answer, disengage from subsequent discussion of the question.  Thanks to Mazur’s and Lasry’s observations as well as my own, I’ve been much more intentional this semester about showing my students these initial results.  There’s potential for a study of this factor, too.

Lucas’ definition of “high status” is a practical one, certainly, and a useful one, too, I think.  James explored the connection between high-performing students and contributions to peer discussions in his study, too.  There are other definitions of status, however.  For instance, when I interviewed Edna Ross for my book, she described the some of the ways in which race and gender affect student-to-student discussions during peer instruction time.  If better instructions and lower stakes help motivate lower-performing students to participate more meaningfully in peer instruction (as Lucas’ and James’ results seem to indicate), might these methods also help defuse some of negative ways that race and gender impact peer instruction?  Given the results of  Reay, Li, and Bao (2008), indicating that their clicker-facilitated question-sequence pedagogy reduced the performance gap between male and female students, the answer is quite possibly yes.  There’s another study idea for you…

Two final comments: I like the idea that clicker scores might function as an easily obtained early warning indicator for students struggling in a course.  Implementing this would involve scoring clicker questions on accuracy (for this purpose if not as part of students’ grades), as well as taking a look at individual student clicker scores early in the semester.

Also, Lucas’ finding that implementing peer instruction in the classroom leads students to value learning from their peers more is an interesting one.  This result indicates that the teaching methods we use can have an impact on students’ metacognition, their learning about learning.  And if you believe that student-to-student learning is valuable (as many do), then we can have a positive impact on our students’ metacognition by implementing peer instruction.

I’ll add here that Adam Lucas, the author of this article, and I will be facilitating a minicourse on teaching with clickers and classroom voting at the January 2010 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco.  Math faculty interested in getting started teaching with clickers are encouraged to join us!

More ideas today for how using mobile devices (particularly smart phones like the iPhone) as part of classroom response systems might enhance or detract from the effectiveness of such systems.  I brainstormed these ideas while preparing for my presentation at the recent ConnectEd Summit.  See part one and part two of this series, too.

Display of Results – Not only does the bar chart showing distribution of student answers to a multiple-choice clicker question provide useful information to an instructor, but it also provides useful information to students.  Often students appreciate knowing where they stand relative to their peers, whether that’s in the context of a content question with correct and incorrect answers or a student perspective question asking students to share their opinions or experiences.  Knowing the distribution of answers can often motivate students to engage more seriously in classwide discussion, particularly if there are multiple popular answer choices.

How to replicate this advantage when having students respond to free-response questions with mobile devices?  I noted the challenge of coming up with useful reporting tools for these kinds of questions in my last post.  One idea that occurs to me, however, (because I think one of the ACU people mentioned it at EDUCAUSE) is that the entire set of responses could be sent to each student’s mobile device.  Then students could spend a little time individually or in small groups reading and analyzing these responses.  This would give the students a sense of their peers perspectives on the question and quite possibly enhance subsequent class discussion.  Sending response data back to students for analysis seems like an application of mobile devices with a lot of potential.

Data for Instructional Improvement – Clickers also make it fairly easy to archive student response data for later analysis.  Instructors can use these data over time to improve their clicker questions, perhaps by eliminating or revising answers choices not chosen by many students, or to assess the effectiveness of their teaching methods.

Including mobile devices in classroom response systems has the potential to generate much richer data sets since instructors would be less dependent on multiple-choice questions.  However, richer data sets are often more difficult and more time-consuming to analyze.  I see potential for enlisting students to assist in such efforts, just as students might help analyze these kinds of responses during class, as described above.

Epistemology through Technology – I claim that the ways we use technology in the classroom communicate to students a message about the nature of knowledge and knowledge-generation in our disciplines.  Having students respond to and discuss clicker questions, for instance, tells students that critical reasoning is part of the knowledge-construction process.

If we let our students use mobile devices to connect with the “cloud” during class, searching for answers to their questions and additional resources online, what does that communicate to them about the nature of knowledge?  It was said many times at the conference that with the information available to students on their smart phones (through access to the Internet), there’s little need to have students memorize great amounts of information.  There is, however, a greater need for teaching students to find, understand, apply, and evaluate the information they find online.  Using technologies like mobile devices, we can point students toward those higher-order learning goals.

I think I’ve got one or two more posts in me from the conference.  Stay tuned…

As I was researching my book, I interviewed dozens of college and university faculty members as a way to discover best practices regarding teaching with classroom response systems.  I learned a lot from these interviews, so I’m going to continue doing them and share them as podcasts on this blog.

This episode features an interview with Ian Beatty, a research assistant professor at the Scientific Reasoning Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  Ian has a background in physics education research, and he’s published several great articles with his research partners on teaching with clickers.  I met Ian at the recent clickers conference at the University of Louisville.

In this interview, Ian describes the pedagogy he and his research group use and study, a pedagogy they call Technology Enhanced Formative Assessment, or TEFA.  He discusses the role of clickers in this pedagogy and shares some advice on writing good clicker questions.  He also addresses the “coverage” question I hear a lot-how can an instructor “cover” the course content while making time for active learning in the classroom?  Ian also talks about his current project exploring how high school teachers learn to use the TEFA approach.

Click the following link to download and listen to the interview:

Podcast #1 – An Interview with Ian Beatty [31:54]

Links:

• Ian Beatty’s Home Page
• Teacher Learning of Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment, Ian’s current project
  

Papers:

• Beatty, I., Gerace, W., Leonard, W., & Dufresne, R. (2006). Designing effective questions for classroom response system teaching. American Journal of Physics, 74(1), 31-39.
• Beatty, I., Leonard, W., Gerace, W., & Dufresne, R. (2006). Question driven instruction: Teaching science (well) with an audience response system. In Banks, D. A. (Ed.), Audience Response Systems in Higher Education: Applications and Cases. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.

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Doug Duncan, an astronomer at the University of Colorado and director of the Fiske Planetarium, gave the afternoon keynote address at the clickers conference in Louisville last Saturday.  Much of Doug’s talk, like Tim Stelzer’s talk in the morning, was directed at faculty relatively new to clickers, and his advice on using clickers effectively was all very sound.

One piece of advice Duncan shared stood out to me.  Several times in his talk, Duncan stressed the importance of telling students why you have them engage in peer instruction via clicker questions (if that’s how you use clickers).  It’s not always obvious to students what they should be getting out of these kinds of learning experiences.  Sometimes students think the point of these activities is to punch the correct button on their clickers.  These activities are usually intended instead to develop students’ conceptual understanding, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking skills, but this only happens if students engage in meaningful discussions with their peers.  As Duncan said, “No brain, no gain.”

Explaining your pedagogy to them (in ways that make sense to them) can help them get more out of the experience and develop metacognition (learning about their own learning).  Plus, it can help them appreciate these activities more, which reduces negative perceptions of the use of clickers.

Duncan shared a sequence of clicker questions he uses to help his students see the value of engaging in peer discussion.  First, “Do you prefer I tell you the answers to clicker questions or give you hints?”  At least half of his students typically say they prefer him to tell them the answers.  Second, “Which leads to longer lasting learning?”  Most students admit that Doug giving them hints leads to deeper learning.  Finally, just to make sure the point is clear, “Do you expect to get a job where you have to think for yourself?”  Almost all his students say yes to this one!

These are great examples of what I call “syllabus reminder questions” because they remind students of the kinds of messages often communicated via syllabi.  Students aren’t often in a great position to receive these messages on the first day of class, so reminding students of them throughout the semester via clicker questions can be an effective use of clickers.  (I describe these questions in the “Monitoring Questions” section of my book.)

Conversations between instructors and students about the teaching and learning process can play an important role in helping students learn more effectively.  I’m glad Duncan stressed this point in his talk and provided us with ideas for how to start these conversations.