Clickers

What: Student or classroom response systems, also known as "clickers" are used to record student responses to questions. A small, portable receiver collects student responses and sends it to the computer, which stores and analyzes the responses. The responses and the results can be displayed in real time.

Why: Many science teachers use clickers to get instant information about student understanding and learning. In general, during the instruction a teacher can ask multiple choice, true-false, or yes-no questions to students and each student then submit his/her response using the clicker. Clickers allow science teachers to see student feedback in real-time and to address or focus on the areas that students have difficulty understanding. Clickers can be also used as a diagnostic assessment to understand students' initial conceptions prior to teaching or to capture student misconceptions. Clickers as a formative assessment tool allow teachers to make adjustments in their teaching as needed.

Research: Various studies have demonstrated that clickers increase students' engagement (e.g., Deal, 2007). Clickers help teachers create interactive classroom environments where students actively engage in their learning. A growing body of research also points to the effectiveness of clickers on evaluating student learning especially in large classes. Clickers can be also used to track individual responses.

Best Practices: Clickers can be used to assess student knowledge of any science topics. They can be used prior to instruction to assess student prior knowledge or during or after the instruction to evaluate student learning. In addition, the responses from a question may be used to promote student argumentation and discussion, either within small groups of students or as a whole class discussion. There are several different types of clickers, keyboard style clickers have more advantages than the others since they allow teachers to ask open-ended questions.

Example: A science teacher can use clickers to start an instruction. Students can use clickers to give a response to the "question of the day" that the teachers can ask at the beginning of the classroom instruction. Students' responses can provide an immediate feedback for the teachers about student knowledge of the class topic.

Later in the lesson the teacher may come back to the clickers and utilizing Page Keeley's formative assessment probes, a question is posted on the board and students respond allowing the teacher to see the changes in student understandings.