As I mentioned in yesterday’s  post, I’ve been thinking about some of the ways that teaching with clickers taps into the participatory culture many of us now live in.  I’ve blogged in the past about ways clickers have been used in non-academic settings, particularly in community meetings, to identify areas of consensus and foster understanding of others.  Here’s another use to add to that collection, from the blog of the UK division of the audience response system Qwizdom:

London. 30th March 2010. The people of Tower Hamlets have been using Qwizdom’s Audience Response System to vote interactively on how to best allocate council resources.

In a series of eight public meetings, members of this community voted on how to spend £2.4 million in the “You Decide!” participatory budget process.  Results of the votes were displayed on-screen for meeting participants for added transparency and community building.

Residents voted for more police officers, handyperson services for older people, youth projects, street lights, park improvements and many other items.

I’m impressed with this initiative, particularly in the amount of funds allocated through this process.  It also removes the “representative” from “representative democracy” in a helpful way, I think.  I would imagine this was a success with community residents.  They were given the opportunity to very directly express their opinions on how funds are to be spent.  I would guess that those residents who weren’t happy with the final decisions would leave the meetings with a greater understanding of their neighbors’ interests and opinions, which is likely to be helpful in the long run.

I wonder how small-group and meeting-wide discussion was handled at these meetings.  Asking community members (or students) for their opinions via clicker questions is usually most effective as a way to foster, not replace, discussion.  It’s also unclear if residents were limited to selecting one use each for the community funds or if they were encouraged to rank multiple uses.  The former voting method can be problematic at times, while the latter yields richer data on community interests.

For my non-UK readers: The title of the Qwizdom blog post is “Strictly Come… Democracy,” which is a play on the UK television series Strictly Come Dancing.  That’s the series that spawned the American show Dancing with the Stars, in case you were wondering.  Also, when composing in WordPress, click on the icon with the capital letter omega on it to insert a £ in your post!

Image: “VOTE” by Flickr user Theresa Thompson / Creative Commons licensed