Clickers in EAS

The students taking EAS 1600 and 1601 use clickers during lecture, in lab, and to take exams. I asked Drs. Jim St. John and Oleksandr Karabanov about the advantages of using clickers in these settings and here is what they had to say:



How has using clickers for embedded quiz questions in lectures changed your class? How has using clickers helped students the most?

 

The most obvious change is that attendance has risen from 50 – 60 percent to 85 – 90 percent. The clicker questions also keep students more engaged in class. Clickers also give me and students immediate feedback on the level of understanding a concept. A student who gets a wrong answer knows he or she needs to focus more on that concept. If a large percentage of the class gets a question wrong, I spend more time covering that topic in class. Quiz scores account for 15 percent of the total course score but when I correlate quiz scores with total course scores I get R² values of 40 to 50 percent. This tells me that attending and paying attention in lecture play a major role in improving exam scores. - JSJ



How has using clickers to score exams changed the way you analyze your test results?



Before the clickers I really didn’t have a method for analyzing exam results other than plotting score distributions. With these rich data sets I can find which questions are giving the students the most problems and which are too easy. There are also some very beneficial side effects:

1. I am able to post scores on T-Square within an hour of the end of the exam.
2. As the scoring is objective, I get very few requests for extra points from students who want to negotiate scores. However, when students point out that a question is worded in a confusing manner, I can electronically rescore all the exams very easily.
3. The students perceive that the “clicker exams” are easier than the old-style exams I give them as study guides (however, the exam averages are the same).
4. Whenever I survey the students, I find that 85 – 90 percent prefer clicker exams. - JSJ

What is the advantage of using clickers in lab?



The primary advantage of clicker scoring in labs is the reduction of work for the TAs. In addition, there are fewer mistakes in grading and the grading is less subjective, allowing for consistency across sections. TAs can also visually see the progress of students during the lab and correct them when necessary. - OK