Teaching with Classroom Response Systems
Resources for engaging and assessing students with clickers
Further Thoughts on the Costs (and Benefits) of Clickers
Author: derekbruff9 Feb
Back in December, I shared some thoughts on Michael Bugeja’s Chronicle of Higher Education essay titled “Classroom Clickers and the Cost of Technology.” My post generated a lot of comments. Bugeja’s essay generated other responses as well, including three letters to the editor published last month in the Chronicle. All three letters point to educational research conducted on teaching with classroom response systems that Bugeja chose not to mention in his essays, which was my response to the essay, as well.
For instance, Stephanie Chasteen of the University of Colorado-Boulder wrote:
Mr. Bugeja hypothesizes that students would vote against the use of clickers because the costs outweigh the benefits. Research suggests otherwise. In our own large introductory-physics courses, 95 percent of students stated that clickers helped them learn the material. Studies in other disciplines suggest that students are more likely to value clickers when they’re used to promote discussion, rather than to ask simple questions or take attendance.
Doug Duncan, also of the University of Colorado-Boulder, wrote:
Most of the practices [Bugeja] describes are what our research shows to be worst practices. We see them fail, too. When instructors use clickers as part of peer instruction and explain to students that they will attend class more, work harder, learn more, and be rewarded for that, peer instruction and clickers produce learning gains. When instructors ask low-level memorization questions and don’t explain why they are using clickers, students call them dumb and worthless.
I’ll continue to explore and discuss the research on teaching with clickers here on this blog. Given the clear learning gains that clickers can facilitate as well as the cost of the technology, it’s important to give due consideration to both sides of the cost-benefit discussion.
Further thoughts on Bugeja’s essay or on these responses to it?
2 Responses for "Further Thoughts on the Costs (and Benefits) of Clickers"
The Chronicle did not ask me to reply to these letters, which typically is a courtesy given to an author, especially of an enterprise piece such as mine on clickers. I wrote a response to the letters, but the Chronicle decided to move on so as not to encourage the back-and-forth that may occur here when I share with your viewers my unpublished reply:
Dear Editor:
In the Jan. 30 issue of The Chronicle, several “clicker” advocates voice a “strong case” for the television-like, remote-control device without acknowledging that my essay disclosed how the technology evolved to its current state–through a series of inane, costly moves, from infrared to radio frequency, violating student fee policies as well as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Surely, there is a better way to introduce technology into the classroom, but none of the letter writers seemed very interested in that, in their haste to promote yet another corporate gadget adding to student debt as universities slash budgets because of the economic collapse.
How disappointing and yet so typical to read such blatant promotion while universities are instituting hiring freezes and furloughs!
In the coming months clicker advocates ought to ponder what is in the interest of debt-ridden students whose parents lost jobs, homes and retirement, eroding the tax and tuition base that allowed these classroom extravagancies before the subprime and student loan scandals.
Apparently, they will have to make difficult choices, determining whether those clickers are more valuable than colleagues, because we can no longer afford both
[...] (also at CU-Boulder). Those are online at the Chronicle but only available to subscribers. Derek Bruff commented on those letters as [...]
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