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Student Response Systems: "Clickers" at Boise State University

Background

Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of faculty have become aware of student response systems (or “clickers,” as they are known informally) and their use in bringing immediate feedback and interaction to the classroom. Clickers are small keypads that students can use to wirelessly transmit YES/NO answers and alpha-numeric content to a receiver connected to a computer used by the instructor. Typically, instructors present multiple-choice questions to gauge student skills or knowledge; student responses are displayed as a histogram—a quick snapshot of how well students understand the material. The technology may be used in graded situations where specific clickers are registered to specific students or they may be used anonymously to simply provide interaction and feedback without identifying the responses from any individual student. Additionally, clickers can be used to take attendance, with students registering their presence with a single push of a button.

Enough experience with clickers has taken place to confirm their potential as a useful classroom tool for enhancing interaction and providing immediate feedback. In fact, many textbook publishers have adopted one brand or another and now package them with textbooks.

With funding from the State Board of Education, Academic Technologies recently completed a 1-year project to evaluate and compare various brands of clickers, both from a technical standpoint and from the perspective of the user. No single brand or manufacturer emerged as dominant, and no manufacturer has attained a clear technological advantage over the competition.

Like all technology, clicker technology changes rapidly, with new products constantly being brought to market. Pricing and support models are likewise changing, and clickers are regularly gaining new features and capabilities. This rapidly changing marketplace results in an unstable environment in which simple choices and clear answers are difficult to come by. Given such an environment, we believe the wisest course of action for Boise State is to maintain as many options as possible and avoid committing to one manufacturer or single product unless a market shakeout occurs and a technologically superior product emerges.

Recommendation

To avoid students being required to buy multiple clickers, each different from the others and therefore incompatible with other systems, Academic Technologies has sought to at least narrow the choices for this technology. After reviewing the results of the evaluation study, we have negotiated with two companies (Turning Point and E-instruction) to provide clicker technology to Boise State on a discounted basis. Each of the selected products were found to have the following characteristics:

easy to learn and use
good integration with the Blackboard course-management system
supported by major suppliers of textbooks at Boise State
good technical support for both students and faculty

We are confident that the two brands are provided by leading companies whose products will satisfy the needs of most faculty and whose products are likely to survive any market consolidation.

How to Incorporate Clickers into Your Teaching

If you are interested in exploring clicker technology, we encourage you to attend one of the workshops or demonstrations presented by Academic Technologies. To view descriptions of the workshops and demonstrations, or to register to attend, please visit http://itc.boisestate.edu/events.

We also have a limited number of loaner units you can check out for a semester to try the technology before requiring students to buy clickers. We will help train and support instructors using either Turning Point or E-instruction clickers, and we will soon be providing a mechanism for importing clicker responses into the grade book in Blackboard.

Of course, you may use any of the many brands of clicker technology, but Academic Technology will only support Turning Point and E-instruction. In addition, these are the only brands that students will be able to purchase at the discounts we’ve negotiated. Other brands will also not be integrated with Blackboard, primarily because the software needed for integration may conflict with and disrupt Blackboard functionality.

We invite you to explore this technology and determine for yourself if it adds value to your teaching. For assistance, consultation, or further information, please contact Ken Hyde at 426-1862 or khyde@boisestate.edu.