Psychology professor finds clickers enhance learning in her courses

Swim uses the clickers in PSYCH 423, Intergroup Relationships. She said that there are three primary ways she uses clickers, including in-class voting such as during debates, offering feedback to students on with in class demonstrations, and gauging if students are understanding course concepts. “For instance, today we had a debate in class and for the debate we had students present two sides of an argument.” she said. “Before the argument we had them vote for what side they want supported.” 

The clickers are then used as a feedback device. “After the arguments are made they vote, and then they discuss it among themselves and then they vote again,” Swim said. “It gives some feedback to the debaters and it gives a sense of whether or not people are influenced by what they hear from both the debaters and their discussions with others.”

“We had one discussion regarding whether religion counters or enhances prejudice,” Swim added. “Before debating I had students vote if religion counters prejudice or enhances it and we looked at the results. Then we discussed it and the students revoted after they talked more about it. You could see right away if opinions were changed.”

The ability to see graphic representations of the feedback during in-class demos is another benefit that Swim finds valuable. She works with her teaching assistant, (Michelle Mancini, to keep track of class participation via the clicker data.

“Before clickers, I’d have students raise their hands and I’d sit there and count. It just wasn’t as impactful as actually seeing the graph and seeing the patterns,” Swim said. “So the students and I look at the patterns and we then talk about the results.”

Swim also finds clickers useful for checking on student comprehension. If she is discussing something in class that she believes may be confusing to students, she will ask a question and have students answer via clickers. That enables her to instantly see if students are understanding what is being said. 

Why did Swim decide to use clickers? She wanted to increase participation, and also get student opinion that would be less likely to be influenced by peer opinion. This is because no one else can really see how others are responding via clicker, as opposed to raising hands or vocal responses.

“I think people make a commitment to something when they push on the button,” Swim said. “They are more likely to say something about their own thinking than if they respond after they see someone else respond. And just clicking itself is participation, so it makes them think about what they just did. That’s probably the biggest thing with clickers, the participation.” 

All these benefits, Swim said, helps improve the student’s educational experience. “I think clickers enhance learning,” she said. “I think that they increase the knowledge and increase the participation.” 

To help her get to the point where she could integrate clickers into her courses, she met with Teaching and Learning with Technology staff and attended a session on clickers in the summer. She tried them out in a presentation she gave at a Campus Sustainability Office Green Team meeting. She said since then she has needed no additional assistance. 

“The session I attended was really good because it helped me think how I was going to use this for grades,” Swim said. It also helped me anticipate the problems like the clicker batteries running out. Or students coming in and saying ‘I forgot my clicker.’ It helped me anticipate those problems so that’s been great.”

As for whether she would recommend other faculty using clickers, Swim said that she would. “I think it’s a really nice thing for instructors to use,” she said. “The students benefit from it. I think it’s a great idea and people should use it.”

To learn more about classroom response systems, please visit the Penn State Clickers page.