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Clickers Redefining Classrooms
markmcb writes "It seems that teachers may have a new way to boost classroom participation using a device called a clicker. A clicker is a small handheld device that allows its user to wirelessly respond to various prompts selected by a teacher. So when a teacher wants opinions on topics that people tend to shy away from like sex, religion, and politics, the question can be asked and the students can answer anonymously via the clicker. Everything from a simple poll to a graded quiz can be conducted using the device. In the age of cell phones and wireless computers such a technology is likely to be well-received by students, but one can't help but wonder if such a device will breed less assertive graduates who lack the will to stand up and voice their opinion on sensitive issues."
Yeah, we used those at Northwestern last summer in physics. IIRC about 20% of them actually properly recorded the student response. No thanks.
This is a terrible idea. I had to sit through a class at MIT rife with stupid ideas like this. Instead of a normal classroom/lecture setting, where you simply learn at your own pace outside of class or pay attention as suits you, you just sit there and *seethe* and this goddamned clicker thing. You don't really feel the need to concentrate or pay attention because no normal person can come up with 5 legitimate sounding answers for you to choose from.
Maybe this is GREAT for some settings, but this robs students of real interaction with their teachers and replaces it with bullshit polls every 5 minutes. Not appropriate for high school or college, IMHO.
If you want to do this kind of nonsense, the old show-of-hands technique, in my experience, works wonders, provided that instead of assaulting people who get it wrong, you work towards the right answer.
And no, I didn't RTFA.
I recently went through the transistion in my previous college to not having these clicker type devices to having them. We call them PRS. Don't remember what it stands for..
But anyways, it takes all the fun out of college. At the beginning of class, the prof will require everyone in attendence to "click" into class. You have to point your unit at some sensors and then via wireless signals the computer records your attendance. Thus, every professor on campus is now taking attendence this way. No fun anymore, because you must attened every class, or your grade automaticaly drops.
Of course, this has it's puropse, and is a great motovational tool. A few of my friends have even reverse eng'ed the deivce and when they're feeling mischivous enough, disrupt the signal enough for the PRS recieving unit to go haywire and throw an error on the screen - thus ending the attendence taking or the quiz taking or what ever. I suspect that these people have learned more from studying the device then any bullshit 2nd/3rd year comp sci course could teach them.
Devices like these are a major form of social control. Awful for educational purposes, at least so says any student who's had to deal with the little bastards.
But then again.. when it comes time for me to be the grad student teaching, I'm sure I'll use it. Damn maturity.
My 0010 cents.
'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it...
I actually got stuck in a sample class using these, and I'm not a big fan. What happens is the teacher will ask some multiple-choice question, then he has to stop talking for several minutes while he switches to the clicker server program. The whole class strains and points and tries to get the sensors in the room to pick up their answer. There isn't any indication if it was *your* clicker which was picked up by the sensor though, so everyone just keeps clicking. They have to constantly check the screen to make sure that their number was picked up - which doesn't always happen.
Maybe it's just because they're new, but the teachers I had tried to avoid using the clickers for points. I'm sure the teachers got some decent feedback - knowing what people understood and didn't. Then again, they were in my physics classes, so it was easy to formulate questions and get responses in a "short" amount of time. I certainly appreciated that over homework questions. It did help once or twice to let me know I misunderstood something, but overall, they were very frustrating, and grew to be one of my pet peeves.
Just one? Siiigh, here I go, likely to get modded flamebait, but what the hell. I've talked to numerous MIT students (ranging from current undergrads, to PhD's) in several different fields (mechanical engineering, electronics, etc). I also worked for MIT (see below).
MIT is "rife", like many "top" schools, with professors who barely show up for the classes they supposedly "teach". TA's run the class, do the grading, and interact with the students. Meanwhile, the professors are busy doing the traditional MIT professor path: invent something, patent it, form a company, get rich off it. MIT has an entire office full of patent attorneys, called the Technology Licensing Office- where I worked for a bit. They measure revenue in hundreds of millions of dollars. MIT has turned into an R&D mill; the Media Lab is a perfect example. MIT's best and brightest from the Media Lab have turned out...a shag-rug-covered alarm clock that rolls off the table when you hit the snooze button. Slightly clever, very half-baked, and utterly lacking in anything even remotely approaching state of the art in -any- field. But it's from an MIT student, from the Media Lab no less, and their shit is gold and smells of rose blossoms- so it gets local, national, and international coverage, and nobody says "hey, this is just an alarm clock with two wheels and motors that turn on for a random bit of time". Ie, something a smart 8th grader could make.
I went to a college where I was on a first name basis with my CS professors, their significant others...even knew their kids, and I'd bump into them on campus at concerts and stuff. I could, during their fairly wide office hours, walk into their office, plop down on the couch, and ask them questions about the current homework assignment or project. I knew most of the kids in my classes (the largest, an "intro" level class, was 25 people). You know what? I actually learned stuff, and not just what was in my textbook.
Maybe if MIT professors actually taught their classes, class size would be smaller, students would feel more involved (and hence as questions more often during a lecture) and the quality of the lecture would be such that fewer questions would be necessary in the first place.
Some will argue that MIT's professors, focusing on research, are its strength. Except to undergrads, they'll never get even close to this state-of-the-art research. The professors who come up with truly revolutionary stuff are usually the furthest removed from students. "Top" schools all sell the same lie the armed forced do- "join us, work on cutting edge stuff!" Well, funny thing that you join, and find yourself cleaning lab equipment. Hey, it's a step up from cleaning toilets in the Air Force general's jet, I guess.
Want a perfect example of MIT's failure to educate its graduates with real-world, useful skills? The recent underwater vehicle competition where a bunch of barely-literate high school students from a poor texas immigrant community beat the MIT team.
Please help metamoderate.