To address this I tried a different approach using PollEverywhere, one of many different on-line polling services. It took about a half hour to figure out the little things about it but it wasn't too bad. Here's how it addressed the issues noted above:
- lugging around the clickers - no need to! Students can use any data-capable electronic device that they would normally bring. This includes cell phones (with at least texting capacity which is pretty standard these days), tablets, and laptops.
- text entry - very easy with any of the devices noted above and the way they send in the info is flexible: they can text the answer, tweet it, or use a web-interface
- troubleshooting - the students are using devices that they are already very capable with so there's no technical issues on that end.
Other advantages:
- I can see where this would address other issues too like batteries dying on clickers, or students forgetting their clickers (if they were required to purchase).
- service is free as long as your class is under 40 students - which is the case for most of our classes here at Elon
- with text entry you can take the class responses and report them in a word cloud (see previous post) which is a really nice way to quickly summarize responses like this.
- no need for students to purchase anything new - although if even a small percentage don't have a mobile data-cable device of some sort (including a laptop) that could be a limiting factor)
Disadvantages:
- While probably 30 of my 33 students had at least one capable device on them, a few of the students do not carry these around regularly and therefore could not participate.
- as a very simplistic texter I was challenged to communicate to the students how to text to the site. This only involves a few code numbers but nonetheless it turned out to take a minute for all of us to get on the same page.
