Clickers, also known as audience response systems, have become very popular in some large lecture courses. These devices allow students to select answers in a true/false or multiple-choice format in response to questions usually presented to students on PowerPoint slides. There is much written about them in the press, on blogs, and increasingly in academic journals. Those who write about them tend to be positive, and presumably take the time to do so because they are stimulated by their belief that they have successfully used them to increase student engagement, course satisfaction, and learning. Some negative commentaries and academic reports have been published, based on either scepticism about their pedagogical utility or frustrations with the technology, especially in its early forms (e.g., set-up and take-down times at the beginning of each class, software problems, students forgetting their clickers, dead batteries, or clickers not working properly). (The published peer-reviewed literature is currently mushrooming, making it unwieldy to provide citations here, but in our forthcoming book the literature on the efficacy of clickers in enhancing engagement and learning outcomes will be thoroughly reviewed.)
Part of the problem appears to be that the technology has been going through growing pains, with earlier versions being cumbersome and time-consuming to set up in each class, and plagued with glitches and reception problems (e.g., interference of florescent lights with infrared beams from certain types of clickers; range problems from receivers).
Based on the technical and pedagogical problems reported in the literature, I do not think clickers would ever be universally used, especially in liberal arts courses (as opposed to the so-called STEM disciplines—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), and would only be widely used if classrooms were permanently wired for them, relieving professors and students of the hassle and expense of their set-up and use. Still, the technology appears to be improving, as is the pedagogy, so there may be more reason to endorse the use of clickers in certain types of courses if they are used to teach and reinforce how to think about fundamental principles in a discipline.
However, the question remains concerning how much clickers can re-engage seriously disengaged students who seldom attend class or prepare if they do attend (up to 40-50% of students study less than 10 hours per week, according to NSSE studies). Indeed, up to 10 percent of students will not even buy the clickers when it is part of a course requirement. And, to what extent do clickers just enhance the learning experience of fully engaged students (those doing more than 25 hours per week studying) who would do well in a course without the clickers? Or, is it the partially engaged students who benefit (those doing moderate weekly studying, equivalent to treating school as a part-time activity), because clicker exercises are a substitute for the studying they should have done to prepare for class? Some of these questions are being answered with more current research, and the answers are clear that clickers will not solve all disengagement problems. However, a deficit of this literature is that students’ initial level of academic engagement in general (i.e., how serious they are as students to actively engage in any of their courses) is not measured and taken into accout in explaining possible effects.
Some of this research helps us understand what students think of clickers. After all, as enthusiastic as a professor may be about clickers, if certain students are not on board, how effective will the clickers be for them? As it turns out, a substantial minority of students, some 15-20 percent, are not comfortable with clickers, and many have difficulties with simple matters like registering their user-numbers properly and in a timely fashion. Moreover, while just over half of students indicate that they enjoy clickers, a sizable percentage is either ambivalent or downright hostile to them. My hunch is the latter group is largely made up of the more seriously disengaged students.
The key factor affecting acceptance of clickers by students seems to be whether they are used primarily for the benefit of the instructor (e.g., for taking attendance or easy grading) or for the students; or as one study puts it, whether they are ‘compelling or empowering.’ This study dug deeper to examine the hardcore group of students with the most negative feelings and found that they generally do not favour any sort of student participation in courses, so there may not be much to be done to reach these students (this constituted almost 20% of this sample and they may be primarily the most disengaged students).
Clickers do seem more suited to pedagogies associated with training students in certain vocational-type skills where there are clearly correct answers, whether they be content-retention or problem-solving abilities. Still, there may be room in some liberal-arts courses for the use of clickers in enhancing formative learning exercises that help students understand the tenets of theories and the conclusions that can be drawn from those tenets, as well as to evaluate the validity of arguments in relation to certain types of evidence. On the other hand, good teachers using active learning approaches like class discussions that involve students in reasoning through problems have been able to enhance learning outcomes long before clickers came along. One study investigated this by comparing the same course taught with clickers versus active class discussions of material, finding no difference in learning outcomes.
The published peer-reviewed research is mixed in terms of the effectiveness of clickers in terms of both engagement and learning outcomes, but as noted above, studies to date have not taken into account students’ initial level of general engagement. Student reactions are largely positive when clickers are used in a fashion that they perceive is in their interest, which involve formative evaluations and active learning of the principles of a discipline. However, it is doubtful that clickers actually reduce hardcore disengagement. In fact, seriously disengaged students likely resent the subtlety coercive aspects of these devices. Partially disengaged may be the prime beneficiaries to the extent that classroom ‘engagement’ compensates for their out-of-class disengagement by raising their grades slightly, especially when the clickers are used to encourage active learning in class. And, fully engaged students may benefit from any type of use of clickers by having their independent learning reinforced in class and helping them up move more quickly up the learning curve of the discipline in question.
So, to click or not to click? For professors, it depends on whether you are comfortable using an interactive technology as part of a public performance and feel you can use it in a way that actively involves students in reasoning through the most difficult principles and theories of your discipline. For students, it depends on how much you are willing to engage yourself in your courses and to sincerely attempt to move up the learning curve in each. Unless both professors and students are willing to approach this technology in these ways, there is likely to be some frustration and dissatisfaction on both sides of the lectern.