Clickers for audience response

Clickers (by Turning Technologies), also known as "Student Response Systems (SRS)" "Audience Response Systems (ARS)" or "Personal Response Systems (PRS)," are hand-held devices that help teachers interact with students during lectures. Through interactive question-and-answer sessions, instructors can engage students in course material by providing instant visual feedback to the class. This allows the instructor to collect individual responses from hundreds of students at once and gauge student comprehension. If you are interested in exploring this technology, contact us for a consultation!

How do they work?

STEP 1: The instructor asks a question.
The question is usually projected on a large screen in class.

STEP 2: Students click their answers.
The classroom computer registers all student responses.

STEP 3: The instructor displays and discusses the results.
The instructor can display a graph that shows how the class responded as a whole and discuss students' group or individual responses.

Do we have any on campus?

Clickers have been purchased by the Nursing and Education departments on campus. If you are interested in purchasing clickers or scheduling a demonstration, please contact us. 

Basic information and tips

• 7 Things you should know about clickers (Educause Learning Initiative)
• Best Practices (Turning Point Technologies)
• Twelve tips for using a computerised interactive audience response system (University of Dundee, UK)
• Effective Use of the Audience Response System: A Primer (Columbia University )
• What are "Best practices" (Ohio University)
• What are Clickers adn how can we effectively use them? (Carnegie Mellon)

Additional research

• Turning Talk Library
• Turning Point Case Studies

Clickers in higher education

Below are links to a series of articles that detail instructors' experience in using and integrating clickers in their classrooms.

• Assessment and Student Response Systems The Teaching Exchange: S. Birdsall interviews professors at Brown University and their experiences with student response technology in the classroom, including the use of collected feedback.
• Clickers in the Classroom: An Active Learning Approach - Martyn, M. EDUCAUSE Quarterly: Martyn compares using clickers in the classroom to the active learning method of class discussion, expanding upon the benefits that student response offers.

• Using Clickers in Nonmajors- and Majors-Level Biology Courses: Student Opinion, Learning, and Long-Term Retention of Course Material - Cossgrove, K. & Curran, K.  CBE - Life Sciences Education:
• Enhancing Classroom Instruction One Click at a Time (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)