Overall, I thought the technology worked quite well! We received 19 responses to the first question and 23 to the second. One highlight was students giving “shout out” messages to their favorite professors. Another was the surprising depth and thoughtfulness of the texts received! Here are two examples in response to the second question:

“Its important for us to think about the power of the individual to solve the problems society faces. Democratic devolution is pivotal.”

“…highlighting the importance of lead poisoning testing for kids since the symptoms are so typical of other illnesses.”

I see this type of open-ended response as potentially much more powerful than the multiple-choice options that clickers offer. Texts could be sent in by cellphone or through a web form that worked well on the iPad from our Media Lab. With more than 60 people in the room at one point, and a browse-and-wander structure, the Poll Everywhere solution was also a cleaner one that trying to give out, and later collect, clickers. I think I will try this technology again.

If you’re not familiar with the difference between the two products, TurningPoint provides plug-ins for Microsoft Office to let you insert questions into your documents, but it only works with MS Office 2004 for Mac.  The TurningPointAnywhere software gives you a response indicator that “floats” on your desktop and isn’t linked to any software, so you can use it with questions in any format, including questions written on the chalkboard.  The short video tutorials are available at http://www.turningtechnologies.com/audienceresponsecommunity/tutorials.cfm

The live training also sounds very promising, and I plan to attend a couple of them in the next two weeks to see how they are.  I’ve attended live online training from TurningTechnologies in the past, and it was always very good.  The schedule and registration links are available at http://www.turningtechnologies.com/audienceresponsecommunity/onlinetraining.cfm

These new support offerings will be a nice complement to the short training videos that we have posted at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/computing/teaching_resources/clickers/resources  

I have to wonder if TurningTechnologies got the idea from us, because I showed our sales rep our videos about a year ago, and she thought they were a great idea.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and in this case, a form that is helpful to our users, too!

Clicker and Receiver

These clickers allow students to vote on a multiple-choice question that the instructor displays on the screen, and then see the histogram of the voting results and, optionally, the correct answer .  We have standardized on clickers from TurningTechnologies.com, which provides free software for instructors to insert questions into PowerPoint presentations on either a PC or a Mac.  Students can buy the clickers next to the textbook for their course in the Penn Bookstore for $40, and sell it back like a used textbook at the end of the term – unless they want to keep it to use in future courses, which is becoming more and more likely.  SAS Computing loans instructors the receiver for the semester.

Instructors have found a variety of ways to use these clickers effectively.  Some use them to gauge student understanding of a topic and determine how much time they need to spend on it during class.  Others use it to have students answer a difficult question, or one where there are likely to be a variety of responses, and then discuss the answer with their neighbor and vote again before the correct answer is revealed.  Students’ responses can be completely anonymous, or the instructor can set it up to have the students register their clicker number in Blackboard and then have each student’s response to the questions recorded so that their scores can be uploaded to the Blackboard Grade Center.  Many instructors take a middle ground between these two approaches, having the students register their clickers, but only recording whether or not a student voted at all – not grading the actual responses.  All of these approaches seem to keep students from “zoning out” in the middle of a large lecture, and instead stay engaged throughout the 50 or 80 minutes.  They also ensure that every student’s opinion is counted, so that students in the front of the room aren’t given more attention than students toward the back, and they also avoid the peer pressure of voting with the largest group when hands are raised.

If you’re interested in learning more about this technology, please see the SAS Computing page on Using Clickers in the Classroom or the Weigle Information Commons page on Clickers – Personal Response Systems.  There’s a seminar on November 5, 2008 at the WIC where you can learn more about clickers and try them out – click here for information and registration.  We’ve also recorded a short video of two instructors discussing their use of clickers in the classroom – it’s available here.  Please just get in touch with the contacts listed on the SAS Computing page or the WIC page if you’d like more information.