CLICKER PEDAGOGY: RESEARCH IN SUPPORT OF PRACTICE

Clickers are fast becoming a pervasive technology in geoscience classrooms and have the potential to provide support for learning, especially in large classes. Educational research has consistently shown that: 1. Students learn concepts best when they have opportunities to monitor their understanding; 2. Learning occurs best in supportive social settings where knowledge is constructed in collaboration with peers; and, 3. Students gain a deeper understanding of concepts when we challenge them to answer questions that approach the limits of their understanding. Clickers can facilitate the adoption of proven pedagogies that can help us meet each of these objectives.

The weakest students in our classes are not only unable to answer questions correctly, but they are also unable to self-diagnose their lack of ability (Dunning et al., 2003). The introduction of brief reflective pauses in lecture (Ruhl et al., 1987) has resulted in significant learning gains. The use of clickers and well-constructed sample questions in class provides an opportunity for students to both accurately monitor their understanding and reflect on their learning.

Various researchers have discovered that students learn more when they work collaboratively. Mazur’s (1993) peer instruction technique was conceived prior to the ready availability of clickers but lends itself well to the incorporation of this technology. Peer instruction provides an opportunity for students to answer a conceptual multiple choice question individually before discussing the potential answers and submitting a second response. These peer discussions have been shown to result in sustained learning gains in a college genetics course (Smith et al., 2009) for students who initially select a wrong answer.

Finally, if we seek to make students better learners, we must be prepared to stretch them toward the boundaries of their understanding. Using clickers to respond to questions that the vast majority of the class will answer either correctly or incorrectly does little to improve conceptual understanding. Review of clicker responses to questions posed in an Earth Science course revealed that at least 40% of the class must answer the questions correctly initially to have any hope of a majority of students selecting the correct answer after peer instruction.