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  • Dave Test 3:16 pm on October 31, 2011 Permalink |
    Tags: Clickers   

    Workshop on classroom clicker pedagogy to be held Nov. 9 at Foster Auditorium 

    Faculty and staff interested in getting the most out of in-class use of student response systems (clickers) are invited to register for a clicker pedagogy workshop to be held November 9 at Foster Auditorium in Paterno Library from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The main speaker at the workshop will be Dr. Roger Freedman, Ph.D., lecturer in physics at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Several Penn State faculty members who use clickers in their classes will also be on-hand to discuss their use of technology and to answer any clicker implementation questions from the audience.

    Among the subjects the workshop will cover are the following:

    • Writing good clicker questions
    • Utilizing “peer instruction” and other types of questions
    • Do’s and don’ts when implementing clickers
    • Giving points for answering questions

    At UCSB, Dr. Freedman has taught in both the Department of Physics and the College of Creative Studies, a branch of the university intended for highly gifted and motivated undergraduates. He has published research in nuclear physics, elementary particle physics, and laser physics. In recent years, he has helped to develop computer-based tools for learning introductory physics and astronomy and helped pioneer the use of classroom response systems and the “flipped” classroom model at UCSB. He is co-author of three introductory textbooks: “University Physics”, “Universe”, and “Investigating Astronomy”.

    To register and for more information, please go to: https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=109546 – Refreshments will be available after the presentation in Mann Assembly Room located next to Foster Auditorium.

    For those not able to attend in person, the event will be streamed live by Media Site Live at http://live.libraries.psu.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=caa2d734489a42f5bd4811fea72d60b71d

    The workshop is sponsored by University Libraries and Teaching and Learning with Technology.

     

  • Brian 1:31 pm on September 8, 2011 Permalink |
    Tags: Clickers   

    Using Clickers to Engage Students 

    Over the summer, I’ve had the opportunity to meet over 70 faculty who were interested in using clickers in their classes. The majority teach classes with over 200 students, with the largest being 720. The theme that binds every person I spoke with is student engagement. Teaching a large class has it’s share of challenges, and clickers are perceived as a way to involve all students in class in the learning process. While it’s true that clicking buttons is more engaging than just sitting in class, the real learning gains and engagement come in when questions asked are constructed in a way to challenge students to think deeply, apply new information, and use previous concepts to work together to come to informed decisions. In working with faculty, I was excited by the approaches that we came up with to work with their teaching style, course makeup and content, and expectations.

    A couple of the most interesting approaches include:

    Asking students open-ended questions, and having them work together in small groups to come up with answers. The instructor will be walking around, listening to the discussions, and choose a few answers to use as answers to a clicker question. The whole class will then come together and discuss the potential solutions, and vote on which makes the most sense. This is happening in a Soil Science class, with about 300 students.

    In Marketing 301, basic information is presented, and using clicker questions, students are placed in the role of marketing professionals. They are given a product, and a problem, and are asked, using the information that was presented previously, to decide the best course of action with a particular product, from a marketing perspective. When I visited this class this week, I was so excited to see how much students were interacting with each other, and to hear the kinds of discussion happening in a class of over 300 students.

    I’ll be writing up some more detailed posts about these, and other classes as the semester moves forward. You can find these, and other posts, on the Teaching with Clickers Blog at: http://blogs.tlt.psu.edu/projects/clickers

     

  • Dave Test 10:02 am on September 8, 2011 Permalink |
    Tags: Clickers, ,   

    New Standardized Clicker System 

    During the Spring 2011 semester, ITS piloted two clicker systems in order to find a new standardized student response system for Penn State. Over 4100 students in 22 classes both here at UP and at 4 Commonwealth Campuses tested the two systems. After surveying the faculty, students, and support staff, i>clicker emerged as the clear winner.

    i>clicker is designed from the ground up to be as easy to use as possible. The clicker itself has only 6 buttons – Power and A-E. The i>clicker software operates as a toolbar that floats above any application on Mac or Windows, enabling the system to be used with any presentation software or any other application.

    So far, the response to the new system has been great. For the current semester (Fall 2011), we have 59 instructors using i>clicker in 64 classes, representing a total student enrollment of over 13,000 undergrads. That’s significantly more classes and students than had used our previous clicker system, and we expect the adoption to continue to increase, as word spreads about this new, easier to use and more reliable system.

    For more information visit http://clc.its.psu.edu/clickers/

     

  • Cole Camplese 3:40 pm on August 31, 2011 Permalink |
    Tags: Clickers, ,   

     

  • Cole Camplese 11:04 am on August 31, 2011 Permalink |
    Tags: Clickers, ,   

     

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