increasing classroom engagement and students comprehension through the use of clickers: an italian...

Giovanni Bonaiuti, Università di Cagliari, Dipartimento di pedagogia, psicologia, filosofia

Giovanni Bonaiuti, Università di CagliariAntonio Calvani, Università di FirenzeDanilo Piazza, Collegio Villoresi - Monza

Increasing classroom engagement and students comprehension through the use of clickers: an Italian secondary school experience

2013 ATEE Winter ConferenceLearning & Teaching with Media & Technology

Genova 8 March 2013


1. What are clickers?

2. How can they be used?

3. Researches findings

4. Our research

Outline


What are clickers?

• Clickers are handheld devices that looks like a TV remote

• They allow each student to respond to the teacher's questions during a lesson


Different type of clickers

- Basic set of buttons

- Without display

- Regular set of buttons

- Small display

- Full keyboard

- Large display

There are many types of clickers that allow different uses, like:- yes/no response- multiple choices response- free-text response


Collect and display information

• Software on the teacher’s computer collects the students’ answers

• The teacher can decide to show the data to the class via computer projector

• For example it could be produced a bar chart showing how many students chose each of the answer choices or other graphical representation of data.


A typical learning cycle

Teacher poses questions

Students use clicker handheld to

respond

Responses are transmitted to the

teacher’s computer

Teacher visualizes the answers

eventually displayed to the class


Pedagogical framework

Common uses are the following:

• to increase or manage interaction (i.e. start a discussions or collect votes after a debate)

• to assess students preparation for formative (diagnostic) or summative purpose;

• to find out more about students (i.e. polling student opinions or probing students’ pre-existing level of understanding)

• to guide thinking, leading students through a multistep process by asking which step should come next

• to make lecture fun.


Types of questions

Recall Questions

recall facts

concepts

techniques relevant to

class

Application Questions

apply their knowledge

understanding to particular

situations and contexts

Critical Thinking

analyze relationships

among multiple concepts

make evaluations based on

particular criteria

Student Perspective Questions

students share their opinions

experiences

demographic information

Monitoring Questions

how students are approaching

the learning process

It is possible to use clickers with different type of questions, for example:


Why should they be used?

The literature suggests that they can be used to:• maintain students’ attention and promote active engagement during a lecture;• encourage participation from every student in a class; • allow anonymous, simultaneous, and fast response;• obtain feedbacks and track students comprehension;• collecting opinions and encourages follow-up discussion;• create a safe space for shy and unsure students to participate in class;• add a little fun to the classroom.


Research findings

• Since international research has emphasized the importance of feedback in education, there has been a growing interest in clickers.

• Effective forms of feedback provide cues or reinforcement to the learner as well as from the learner to the teacher (Hattie, 2009).

• Teacher requires a continuous feedback from learners to know whether they are following the lecture, if they understand it or if it is being delivered at the adequate pace (Zarraonandia et al., 2010).

• Even though it is clear that numerous methods allow for increasing active student responding and the associated feedback opportunities, it was recognized that clickers can improve teacher feedback practice in many ways:

– engaging students, – providing immediate feedback to everyone (also in large settings), – allowing students response data to be automatically collected, – increasing the likelihood that a shy or reticent student will participate

(Lantz, 2010)


Our research

Our research took place in Collegio Villoresi S. Giuseppe a school of Monza in the north of Italy


Research questions

• Clickers are mainly used in large classrooms situation and at college level.

• Our research aims to verify whether the clickers are a way to improve attention, participation and learning also in a small classes environment and in a first grade secondary school level.

• To do this we compared two different situations that use "questioning methods" to foster learning:

– Questions and answers by “hand-raising” – Questions and answers with clickers


Participants

• The study took place in the school year 2012-2013 in five sections of a first grade secondary school at Collegio Villoresi of Monza

• Participants in this study included:

– 92 students (12–14 years old)– 5 teachers (2 grammar teachers, 3 history teachers)


Procedures

"B" SituationTwo lessons with clickers

"A" SituationTwo lessons without clickers


Introduction. Q&A on previous lectures

(5 minutes)

Teacher explanation (3 min.)

Questions and answers(2 minutes)

Student's understanding test(up to 10 minutes)

Schematic representation of process

"B" Situationwith clickers

"A" Situationwithout clickers

Both experiences have provided students the same number of interactions with teachers: • in the first case with questions and answers (“hand-raising condition”), • in the second case with the use of SRSs (“technological condition”).

8 times


Results

• Our research attest that in a normal class discussion situation (without clickers) only few students have the opportunity to answer a question.

• Classroom observation in the "A conditions" situations shown that 23% of students answer only one time (Mean=1.41 answers, DS=1.25)

• In the "B conditions" (two lessons with clickers) 100% of participant answer to all questions (more than 8 questions each hour)


ES = 0,32


ES = -0,50


Summary of findings

• We verify that students and teachers like clickers use

• Clickers provide a "safe" way for shy students to participate in classroom discussion. Because of the anonymity, students feel safe to participate

• In the "hand raising" situations only few students answer the questions

– even if the answer is correct, the instructor has no way to gauge if the other students knew the correct answer;

– a student who is unsure of the correct answer may be unwilling to take the public risk of being incorrect.

• Even though, at the end of the experience, our teachers have highlighted some challenges :

– using clickers in class takes up class time– writing effective multiple-choice questions can be a tough job– leading class-wide discussions can be challenging for teachers used to just

lecturing– for the students the fun can lead to loss of concentration


Issues

• Results are consistent with other researches, which forecast students in technological conditions are more cognitively engaged during learning; participants also reported greater positive emotions during the lecture and were more likely to respond fairly to in-class review questions.

• Although the present study provides some indication about the students, in the clicker conditions, are more involved results about the in learning are not clear

• Data show small learning gain in grammar (ES=0.32), worst results in history (ES= -0.50)

• It seems that the use of clickers could be influenced by the subject matter and, conceivably, by the type of specific topic. In fact the arguments in grammar were more clearly defined and the questions were much more precise than in history

• We believe that this technology offers great potential also in a small classes and in a lower grade settings but further researches are needed to investigate the underlying mechanisms.


References

Caldwell, J. E. (2007). Clickers in the large classroom: current research and best-practice tips. CBE life sciences education, 6(1), 9–20.

Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York, NY: Routledge.

Herreid, C. F. (2006). “Clicker” Cases : Introducing Case Study Teaching Into Large Classrooms. Library.

Lantz, M. E. (2010). The use of “Clickers” in the classroom: Teaching innovation or merely an amusing novelty? Computers in Human Behavior, 26(4), 556–561.

Mayer, R. E., Stull, A., DeLeeuw, K., Almeroth, K., Bimber, B., Chun, D., Bulger, M., et al. (2009). Clickers in college classrooms: Fostering learning with questioning methods in large lecture classes. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34(1), 51–57.

Mestre, J. P., Gerace, W. J., Dufresne, R. J., & Leonard, W. J. (1997). Promoting active learning in large classes using a classroom communication system. In E. F. Redish & J. S. Rigden (Eds.), Journal of Consumer Research (Vol. 2, pp. 1019–1036). American Institute of Physics.

Mollborn, S., & Hoekstra, A. (2010). “A Meeting of Minds”: Using Clickers for Critical Thinking and Discussion in Large Sociology Classes. Teaching Sociology, 38(1), 18–27.

Morling, B., McAuliffe, M., Cohen, L., & DiLorenzo, T. M. (2008). Efficacy of Personal Response Systems (“Clickers”) in Large, Introductory Psychology Classes. Teaching of Psychology, 35(1), 45–50.

Nicol, D. J., & Boyle, J. T. (2003). Peer Instruction versus Class-wide Discussion in Large Classes: A comparison of two interaction methods in the wired classroom. Studies in Higher Education, 28(4), 457–473.

Penuel, W. R., Boscardin, C. K., Masyn, K., & Crawford, V. M. (2006). Teaching with student response systems in elementary and secondary education settings: A survey study. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55(4), 315–346.

Trees, A. R., & Jackson, M. H. (2007). The learning environment in clicker classrooms: student processes of learning and involvement in large university level courses using student response systems. Learning, Media and Technology, 32(1), 21–40.

Zarraonandia, T., Francese, R., Passero, I., Díaz, P., & Tortora, G. (2011). Augmented lectures around the corner? British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(4), E76–E78.


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