Clickers: Student Engagement in Large Lecture Courses

Tuesday, November 1 (Week 6)
3:00-4:30pm, 230T HEDCO
To register, contact Robert Voelker-Morris, rmorris1@uoregon.edu

Presenters: Robert Voelker-Morris, TEP and Nargas Oskui, Center for Media and Educational Technologies Consulting

• What are clickers?
• What are the best practices for using them in class?
• How have students responded to them?
• What’s the learning curve on the software?
• What is the procedure for ordering and using clickers at the UO?

Join us for this session addressing these questions, and learn more from faculty already using clickers about their experiences with the technology.

This session is also serving as the introduction for the following two presentations featuring Dr. Stephanie Chasteen (University of Colorado Boulder) hosted by the Science Literacy Teaching Journal Club (http://scilit.uophysics.com/):

Writing Great Clicker Questions

Friday, November 11 (Week 7)
4:00-5:30pm, Science Library B90C-D

How do we avoid asking questions that are too simple, too hard, too similar, or just not focused on the right thing? This workshop will focus on writing those questions that engage students, spark their curiosity, help recap material, give you insight into their thinking, or help them learn critical ideas from the discipline. Learn about different types of questions for different parts of the learning cycle, as well as the surprising power of multiple-choice questions to achieve critical thinking skills. In particular, the workshop will focus on the teaching technique of “peer instruction” — a research-tested method of requiring students to discuss their answers to challenging questions with one another. Peer instruction is facilitated by the use of personal response systems (e.g., eInstruction “clickers”), but many benefits of the technique can be achieved even without the technology. In this workshop, you’ll learn about different types of effective questions, and practice writing questions in our content area and work on improving them.

Prework:

• Watch “Clickers, Students and Teachers Speak” and “Using Clickers Effectively” at http://STEMclickers.colorado.edu
• Read/discuss some ideas in the “Instructor’s Guide to Clickers” at the above website.
• Brainstorm and create a list of “What are the benefits of using questioning in class?”
• Bring to the Session:  Clicker questions that you’ve used and learning goals written for your courses.  

Making Clickers work for you

Monday, November 14 (Week 8)
Noon - 1:30pm, Science Library B90C-D

So now you’ve got some great questions to use with clickers, but that’s no magic bullet. How does a teacher use questioning effectively? How do we avoid just giving students the answer? How do we avoid embarrassing our students, or confusing the class, if they give me the wrong answer? In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore research-based tips and ideas for questioning in a way that allow us to achieve the full benefit of questioning –student engagement and deep learning. We will again focus on the use of “peer instruction.” We’ll discuss common challenges, share tips on getting students to productively argue and reason through the questions, and ways to encourage all students to speak up in response to questions. Time-depending, participants will also get a chance to practice aspects of teaching through questioning.

Prework:

• Attend “Writing Great Clicker Questions” (exceptions can be discussed on a case-by-case basis).
• Watch  “Using Clickers Effectively” at http://STEMclickers.colorado.edu
• Brainstorm and make a list of “What are the challenges to using Peer Instruction in a class? What are some possible solutions?”
• Bring to the Session:  Clicker  questions that you’ve used.