Why use clickers?

Clickers allow students to actively participate in classroom discussions and quizzes when there are more than 10 students in the class. As the instructor of that class, you are probably assuming that the one or two students who answer questions represent the majority of learners. Clickers allow you to know, not assume what all the students have actually learned. I recommend picking one of the class sections mentioned below to start using clickers.

A short clicker quiz in the first 10 minutes will provide you with the following:

• an attention grabber (word scramble, analogy, game)
• an understanding of how much students currently know about your topic
• a demonstration of how much students remember from the previous session
• anonymous opinions about controversial topics
• an evaluation of how many have completed pre-readings.

Based on the results, you can begin your presentation where the students need to begin, and students will be more ready to learn because they have realized some of their learning gaps.

During the class, clickers can be used to do the following:

• recapture attention
• increase involvement with cases
• to get a group answer to questions
• check understanding of difficult concepts.

The end of class is the time to summarize and focus attention on what was learned, clickers can assist this process by:

• quizzing students on key concepts
• redoing an opinion poll given at the beginning
• use a word scramble slide of key words