What was the use?
- I stole a great idea from Sri and was having the students classify music by building a character dataset which we then analyzed for similarity. Had them come up with 10 music "Traits" (examples were acoustic, slow, techno, etc.) then played them clips of 4 songs chosen so that some of them would be likely to be very similar no matter what traits they had chosen. They each scored the traits for each song. Next as a group we built a class character matrix based on the traits they had scored. We used to clickers to have them give their input on what they had scored for that trait, then took the majority. For this part they only input they had was either A-yes, or B-no (although somehow some students still ended up voting C,D, or E....). Next we tested a hypothesis that they developed - that the Jennifer Lopez and the Rihanna songs were more similar to each other than either were to the Harry Belafonte song. After showing them how to do one of the calculations, I let them calculate one and then enter it anonymously on the clickers. For this the students used the numeric option which allows them to type in a number. I decided not to show them the results on here but addressed that there was a mix of correct and incorrect answers.
My goals/hopes - that students would be more engaged overall, would have fun doing something pretty complex, and that they would all feel comfortable answering questions.
Ease of learning how to use them - VERY easy to get going with these. The TLT folks kindly loaned me a set of ~30 iClickers. This comes with a base that you plug into your USB port, and some very simple software. Took about 5 min to get it all set up and to try it out in my office
Ease of setting up in class
- took a few minutes to pass them out, then a few more to help students who had never used them before. Not bad but I hadn't budgeted that in. In classes that use them regularly I hear that they just get the students used to grabbing the clickers when they come in
- very quick to set up base and open up the software
Issues that arose
- I think I could see my self getting tired of lugging a set of 30 of these around. The specific units for this are pretty big, as is the base unit.
- Showing the students the results of a survey (which is one of the highlights - they were clearly excited to see if they were right/wrong) has a catch. Personally I write my notes on the whiteboard and in this room the screen comes down right over most of the whiteboard. Furthermore, the room I was in had an automatic lowering screen so you can't just shine the computer onto the whiteboard. So I had to choose - do I want to show them the results or my notes? If you are someone who uses your computer as the main thrust of your lectures (such as powerpoint talks) then this would not be an issue
Did it help accomplish my goals?
- students definately seemed more engaged
- students were having fun - At the recommendation of one of the TLT postings on this subject I would hide the results of each survey until everyone had voted which added an element of suspence that they seemed to like. Even the fact that a few people kept mistakenly clicking options I wasn't giving them loosened them up a bit.
- there was a high participation in the answering - usually only one student gets to answer any question that I ask the class, but now almost all of them did.
Interesting features that I will try to investigate in the near future
- taking attendance - if you have the students always pick up a clicker then you can use it for attendance which I think would be easy and neat. Obviously you would have to assign a specific clicker number to a specific student for the semester and train the students on that.
- preset questions - if you are organized enough to know all the questions you want to ask them ahead of time then you can have them set up. Doubtful it will work for me but could be useful for others
