<p>As I have a seat on the departmental assembly (the students hold 11 seats, while faculty hold seats on it upon hiring) and we suggested using clickers, I wonder whether clickers really are worth the cost, since we are about to vote on a motion about buying clickers in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>Here is a rough breakdown of what clickers would cost my department:</p>
<p>$50 per clicker x 250 students (graduate students that are PhD candidates or second-year MS students are not counted here)
$350 per classroom (on average) x 15 classrooms commonly used by the department</p>
<p>Are clickers worth the cost? Do you think clickers really help teaching that much? Or it is just a gimmick? I am totally clueless about the benefits and the drawbacks of using clickers since I never used one in college.</p>
<p>Uh, my school made me pay for my clicker. I guess since it’s graduate level it is a little different, but I never cared for clickers much. I’ve only used them for short quizes basically made for attendance.</p>
<p>For your purposes, what seems 7 clicker per class, yeah it’s quick anonymous feedback. It’s up to the prof to make good use of it. </p>
<p>For huge lectures, ostensibly it can gauge student opinion, but when they have us use them once-twice a class and it takes 5 mins each time, it’s really just an attendance keeper. Even when they go on for 90 mins then ask “Do you agree with this,” it gets annoying. Why should I not consult outside sources? It sure gets us to lecture, but that’s all.</p>
<p>If clickers are used properly, they can be a great asset to teaching, especially in giant auditorium lecture halls. They can be used for impromptu formative assessments in the middle of a lecture, and can turn almost any lecture into a more interactive experience that helps keep students engaged. But the faculty have to be trained in the different ways clickers can be used, and they have to be willing to put in the effort to use them. The clicker manufacturer will probably be happy to send a rep to hold training sessions, but it’s still up to the faculty to make back-and-forth communication with students a part of the lecture. I’ve seen some profs use them for nothing more than taking attendance, while others use them to make even a chemistry lecture fun and interactive.</p>
<p>Clickers are worth it for large lectures (100+). It was very useful in my astronomy class and they were also used to take attendance. We were quizzed throughout the lecture but we also got to talk to our peers about the questions and give our reasoning while we looked at the answer choices. He’d show the percentages of who answered what and then if the majority of people didn’t get the right answer he’d go over what needed to go over again. If everyone was getting it, they moved on. Most people who weren’t getting it were the ones usually with the low grades on the exams. For a small class of 30 students or so, my astrophysics professor just gave us these sheets we folded to show letters when he’d put up a question on the power point to see if we were understanding or not.</p>