The small, white devices that fit neatly in the palm of nearly every CU student’s hand at some point throughout their college careers are an important part of their education, according to a recent research study at CU.
Research at CU has shown that the use of clickers during lecture is beneficial to students. Clicker questions have been found to better students’ understanding of the material being taught and improve performance on the clicker questions themselves.
The research on clickers was completed through CU’s Science Education Initiative. Michelle Smith, research associate and science teaching fellow at CU, is one of the 12 employees of the program. She says the initiative began a few years ago and is intended to better science education at CU as well as at other universities.
“It’s a multi-million dollar program to reform the way science is taught here at CU and then be a model for other institutions,” Smith said.
The Science Education Initiative began looking at the impact of clicker use on students during the spring semester of last year. Smith and Tin Tin Su, associate professor of MCD biology and biology researcher, worked to formulate multiple choice questions that would be presented to CU students.
Students were presented with an initial multiple choice question, which they answered independently without the influence of others. According to Su, it was found that about 50 percent of these students got the correct answer. Students were then allowed to talk with their peers about the question that they had just answered.
After students had discussed among themselves the multiple choice question, they were then asked the same question for a second time. The number of students who answered correctly then jumped to above 50 percent.
After answering the same question for a second time, students were asked another question that was different from the first question but related to the same concept. They were not allowed to talk among themselves before answering this question, and yet still greater than 50 percent of the students answered it correctly.
This showed researchers the peer discussion that occurred between the first and second answers submitted by students was in fact reinforcing key concepts that were being taught.
The discussion was beneficial enough that even when students were asked a completely different question pertaining to the same subject matter, they could still submit correct answers independently.
Some students also shared with the researchers that while talking in groups with their peers, they found that none of the group members knew what the correct answer was. Through discussion and piecing together what knowledge they did have, however, they were able to come up with the right answer.
The questions presented to the students during the experiment were not questions of rote memorization. They required the use of problem solving that was applied in the same way to the two different questions posed, Su said.
“All the questions that we were asking…none of them were recall questions…they were all problem solving questions,” Su said.
Although the peer discussion promoted by the use of clickers is helpful in understanding key concepts taught during lecture, CU students say they have mixed feelings about clickers.
“I think it’s good to get people to participate and engage in the material but when it’s hurting your grade and you’re in class every day and you get points off even when you’re participating it’s kind of lame,” said Jessica Finver, a 22-year-old senior architecture major.
Ben Sarvey, a 23-year-old junior mechanical engineering major, expressed a similar view.
“I don’t like when they use it for grading purposes, but I don’t mind clickers; clickers are fine in general,” Sarvey said.
Other students say they dislike clickers, however, and even choose not to purchase them in the first place.
“There are some kids that I’ve seen in my clicker classes that will never buy a clicker…and they’ll just get a zero for all their clicker points,” said Pamela Finver, an 18-year-old freshman studio arts major.
The research that Su and Smith completed has shown that clickers have the potential to promote discussion that aids in teaching key concepts, but does the knowledge of concepts taught through peer discussion last in the long run.
“That we don’t know,” Su said.
It is a question that has certainly interested both Su and Smith in the past, and they are considering pursuing research on the matter in the future.
“That is something that we’ve definitely thought about but haven’t pursued in a very serious way yet,” Smith said.
Both Su and Smith stress that this particular experiment exemplifies not that the clickers themselves, but rather the kinds of questions teachers pose during clicker activities and the discussions that these questions initiate, aid students in learning.
“Our study is looking at benefits of peer interaction,” Smith said.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sara Morrey at Sara.Morrey@colorado.edu.
