clickers for college

Ohio State University students who used the devices to answer multiple-choice questions during physics lectures earned final examination scores that were around 10 percent higher – the equivalent of a full-letter grade -- than students who didn't.

The clickers also appear to level the playing field between male and female students. In clicker classes, male and female students performed equally well. In the traditional, non-clicker classes, male students outperformed female students.

[snip]

Around the country, clickers are regularly used to maintain student attention in large lecture halls. At large universities such as Ohio State, even relatively advanced science classes may contain hundreds of students. Reay said that clickers are a good way to help students pay attention and learn in today's classroom.

[snip]

In clicker classes, multiple choice questions appear on a large computer screen at the front of the lecture hall. Students hold the wireless devices, which resemble small calculators. They cast their votes for the correct answer based on their understanding of the part of the lecture that was just given. A bar graph shows the percentage of students voting for each answer.

Physics educators have expanded the use of clickers at Ohio State by developing sequences of questions to determine if students really understand the underlying concepts of a lecture. The technique involves offering a series of questions -- typically three -- each with different wording and structure, but all designed to test the same concept.

One three-question sequence that Reay and his colleagues developed is used to test students' understanding of Faraday's Law. The class is shown a diagram of two wire loops of different sizes moving into a magnetic field, and asked which loop will experience larger induced voltage at the moment it enters the field.

For an introductory electromagnetics class of engineering majors, this is an easy question and Reay would expect more than 80 percent to answer it correctly.

"But not all students choose the correct answer for the right reason," he said. "A common misconception is that larger loops always have a larger induced voltage, which is not the case. That's why we then ask two more questions that involve loops of different sizes and shapes. The question-sequence method eliminates common student misconceptions, and helps students grasp the underlying concept in a short time."

The idea with clickers, Reay explained, is that both lecturers and students can gauge whether students understand the material in real time. If students don't understand something, the lecturer might try to get them to think about the topic in a different way, perhaps by discussing it amongst themselves to encourage understanding before moving on to a new topic.

Professors typically devote approximately 20 percent of a class to clicker questions, and the rest to traditional lecture and discussion.

[snip]

Students aren't required to use the clickers, but Reay said that participation over the years has held relatively constant at 90 percent. Small incentives, such as grading clicker questions or offering extra credit, can raise participation to 98 percent.

Students seem to like the clickers.

“When we conduct our quarterly surveys, we find that the percentage of students enthusiastically favoring use of clickers is higher than 90 percent,” Reay said.

"In addition to this popularity, our research indicates that our sequence method of using clickers offers students a significant advantage on learning, and we are working to sharpen our methodology for measuring these learning gains. We're finding that the timing of pretests and post tests during the quarter matters, along with different applications of incentives,” he added.

"In addition to this popularity, our research indicates that our sequence method of using clickers offers students a significant advantage on learning, and we are working to sharpen our methodology for measuring these learning gains. We're finding that the timing of pretests and post tests during the quarter matters, along with different applications of incentives,” he added.

[snip]

Both sexes had nearly equal gains in the clicker classes: females had a score gain of 6.2, and males a score gain of 6.7. In the non-clicker classes, the female score gain was 4.3, and the male score gain was 6.6.

As to why clickers seem to help female students more than male students, the anonymity of the devices may offer an advantage. In surveys, nearly all the students -- male and female -- said they liked having the ability to keep their answers private. Students can easily hold the clicker in one hand and block their neighbor’s view. “We suspect that anonymity is a benefit, but right now that is really just speculation," Reay said.

Students Who Use 'Clickers' Score Better On Physics Tests

Am I reading this right?

There was a tremendous gain for female students and essentially no gain for male students? (Of course, I don't know what 1/10th of a point amounts to.)

This seems strange.

Is this a common outcome in college physics courses?:

During the 2006-2007 academic year, the clicker classes outperformed the non-clicker classes by an average of 10 percent -- a full letter grade -- on the multiple choice part of their final exams. The non-clicker class averaged a score of 61 percent on this section; the clicker class averaged 72 percent.