What is it?
Instructors whose subjects include long, multi-step calculations often hear students ask: “How did you know to do that?” While they’re usually able to solve the individual steps, the twists and turns of the journey often elude them, especially when they need to draw on concepts from different parts of the course to answer the question.
It’s possible to help one student, or a small group of students, by walking them through the steps. But how can an instructor scale this up to a group of students, and encourage low-stakes participation? Classroom response systems (or “clickers,” colloquially) are a common strategy to get student feedback in large classes.
Mentimeter is a tool for building interactive presentations that could mimic clicker functionality.
What are the benefits?
Hodges et al. (2017) have found that students report higher motivation and engagement when clickers are used in large-enrollment science classes.
What are the challenges?
It takes a lot of time to set up such a system, and you may also need to spend time teaching students how to respond.
Who’s using this?
Jilian Lang of KPU Physics uses PollEverywhere to create Game Night reviews for her students which combined a breakdown of the question with clicker-like technology. In the example she shared, she broke a complicated physics problem into individual steps. Each step became a multiple choice question that students could vote on using PollEverywhere.
References
Hodges, L. C., Anderson, E. C., Carpenter, T. S., Cui, L., Feeser, E. A., & Gierasch, T. M. (2017). Using clickers for deliberate practice in five large science courses. Journal of College Science Teaching, 47(2), 22-28. KPU Library Permalink.
