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3. how many clicker questions should i give in a lecture?

Most instructors find that between four and six questions that involve serious discussion and reflection in a 50-minute class period works well. These should be distributed throughout the lecture rather than all clumped at beginning or end. In general, students’ attention often starts waning after about 10 minutes of straight lecturing. If one is using other active learning techniques in a lecture period, the number of clicker questions will likely be lower. For a review before an exam, it can often be more effective to fill the lecture period with many clicker questions rather than using other types of review.

4. how do i promote discussion between students?

Achieving good discussion between students is often the hardest but most important part to maximizing the benefit of clickers. This is a change in the culture of the class, and so you should not expect it to happen automatically. You should not give up if it takes a little while to develop, and you should actively encourage it, and explain and model scientific discourse for them.

On the first day and a couple of subsequent days, encourage the students to learn the names and shake hands with everyone around them (in front and behind included). Also giving the students permission to ask names they’ve forgotten can be surprisingly helpful. We may not be able to learn the names of the whole class, but students appreciate knowing someone knows their name.

Students need to feel that the classroom is a safe place to discuss questions, and everyone can potentially be wrong without consequences. Instructors can promote this by explicitly informing students of what they expect and why the interactive/discussion approach helps students learn. This should be done repeatedly during the term as opposed to just at the beginning. We recommend that you also tell students that you’ll be asking them to share their reasoning about the answer so they should discuss it, and then have them share their reasoning at least some of the time in the follow up whole class discussion.

Some techniques for directly encouraging discussion are to require groups to submit consensus votes on a question. Calling on students to ask them what reason their group gave for why an answer is correct or incorrect can also help. Students find it less threatening to offer the reasoning for an answer the answer is seen as coming from the group rather than them, individually. If possible, it’s good to also require students to give reasons for answers on homework and exam answers.

5. how do i get students to get back on task after a clicker question, and stop talking?

A good signal that students are finishing their discussions is when the voting gets up towards 75% of the class. Having an established signal for when discussion needs to end works well, such as a gong tone, whistle, or switching off the lights.

6. don’t “strong” students just give “weak” students the answer if there is discussion?

Research suggests that this isn’t a great concern, and that both “strong” and “weak” students benefit from interacting in peer discussion. However, one study M.C. James, “The effect of grading incentive on student discourse in Peer Instruction,” American Journal of Physics, 74(8), pp. 689-691 (2006). has suggested that the way credit is given for answering questions can impact this. In a class with “low stakes” grading (equal credit for any response, with questions counting 12.5% of overall grade), peer discussion was more balanced, with both students in a pair contributing equally to discussion and more likely to vote differently. In contrast, a class with “high stakes” grading (incorrect responses earning 1/3rd the credit earned by a correct response, questions counting 20% of total grade), students earning higher grades dominated peer discussion, and both students in a discussion pair more often voted the same. In a small study we did in a different course, we found the correlation between students’ clicker question answers and their course grade was surprisingly low, indicating that as students were first learning new material, there was little distinction between “weak” and “strong” students. No matter what the achievement level of the student is, encouraging them to articulate their thinking is beneficial.

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Source:  OpenStax, Clicker resource guide. OpenStax CNX. Apr 11, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10724/1.2
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