Where do we, as managers, draw the line between helping colleagues and sabotaging our own departments?, Mark J. Drozdowski asks in his latest column.
-
George David Clark
is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Texas Tech University. He is also a fellow in creative writing at Colgate University. He will defend his dissertation this spring.
Read David's On Hiring entries -
David Evans
is vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Buena Vista University, in Iowa.
Read David's On Hiring entries -
Gene Fant
is vice president for academic administration at Union University, in Jackson, Tenn.
Read Gene's On Hiring entries -
Isaac Sweeney
is an assistant professor of English at Richard Bland College, a two-year institution in Virginia.
Read Isaac's On Hiring entries -
Rob Jenkins
is an associate professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College.
Read Rob's On Hiring entries -
Katharine Stewart
is a professor and associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' College of Public Health.
Read Katharine's On Hiring entries -
Audrey Williams June
is a staff writer who covers the academic workplace.
Read Audrey's On Hiring entries -
Eliana Osborn
has been an adjunct instructor at Arizona Western College since 2001, teaching mostly developmental English.
Read Eliana's On Hiring entries -
Julie White
is assistant director of student services and an adjunct instructor of sociology at Monroe Community College in New York.
Read Julie's On Hiring entries -
Allison M. Vaillancourt
is vice president for human resources at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.
Read Allison's On Hiring entries
About This Blog
Posts on On Hiring present the views of their authors. They do not represent the position of the editors, nor does posting here imply any endorsement by The Chronicle.
On Hiring Bloggers
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
RSS
Follow On Hiring through your favorite RSS reader: SUBSCRIBE
Contact Us
Want to be a guest poster at On Hiring? Send your suggestion to onhiring@chronicle.com.
17 Responses to You’re Leaving?
mes27 - December 8, 2011 at 8:21 am
Having students use their own devices and an in-class app like PollEverywhere obviates the need for the basket approach to passing out clickers before class and collecting them after class, as well as, the approach where students have to purchase clickers and remember to bring them to the classes that use them. Going forward, building an app that is cross-platform and works on the students’s myriad mobile devices may well be the ultimate solution.
electronicmuse - December 8, 2011 at 9:55 am
Yes, educational uses are a flea that should jump on the back of the (much bigger) dog that peddles “social media.”
Perry Samson - December 8, 2011 at 10:11 am
At the University of Michigan we have developed a system, LectureTools (http://www.lecturetools.com), that includes an advanced student response system plus the capacity for note-taking and questioning from students. In classes with LectureTools over 80% of students voluntarily bring their laptops to class as they see the value of integrating resources. They can also participate with their cell phones so it takes advantage of technologies already available to most students. Research by our Center on Research on Learning and Teaching shows statistically significant increases in student engagement when laptops are deliberately engaged for classroom use using LectureTools.
CRLT@umich - December 8, 2011 at 10:39 am
Here is a link to the research Perry Samson mentions: http://www.crlt.umich.edu/publinks/CRLT_no30.pdf
nybound - December 8, 2011 at 11:55 am
“In classes with LectureTools over 80% of students voluntarily bring their laptops to class as they see the value of integrating resources.”
I waver on allowing laptops in my class. I provide a lot of material in PDFs, and some students tell me they don’t print stuff out, they read it on the screen and take notes on their laptops in Word. So I’ve been allowing it lately, and I get 80+% of students using their laptops with no special software needed! Of course, I realize that most students are probably just using Facebook, etc…
I just live with it. My attitude is that they are adults, they are paying for this, and they can decide whether they want to get their money’s worth today by paying [at least some] attention to me. I’ve talked frankly with some, who claim they are just good at multitasking and they can look at Facebook and listen to me at the same time. I’m skeptical, but I assume the ones who are engrossed in their virtual distractions probably wouldn’t be paying much attention to me even if I banned laptops in the class, and the laptops give them something to focus on instead of trying to chat with their neighbors.
On the clickers, I tried them years ago and hated them. It wasn’t worth all the hassels of students forgetting them somedays, batteries dying, catching students using 2 at once (1 for their absent buddy), etc. Fortunately, my classes are small enough that I can keep [most] students reasonably engaged by getting to know most of their names, having frequent classroom discussions, and occasionally cold-calling. Clickers may be useful in large lectures, however.
proftowanda - December 8, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Aha, an app alternative, I like. So far, I have stayed away from clickers, after semesters of coming into a large lecture hall following a class with clicker usage. I never can get to the multimedia podium for setup in time, as the instructor before me will not move away from it until she has logged in all of the complaints from the line of her students whose clickers did not work for them to get their attendance counted. Yeh, this technology is not yet ready. . . .
ColoCoug - December 8, 2011 at 1:17 pm
One problem with that is taking attendance. In most cases (not all), it’s a holdover from 40 years ago and is not needed.
library_yeti - December 8, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Polleverywhere.com killed clickers. Obsolete.
Derek Bruff - December 8, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Technical problems are something that vary by vendor. I very, very rarely have any technical problems (like students responses not registering) with the vendor we use here.
Four or five years ago, most vendors still had pretty common technical problems, but these days, most don’t. So if you were turned off by clickers a few years ago due to technical difficulties, it’s worth giving them another look.
Derek Bruff - December 8, 2011 at 1:51 pm
As I mentioned in the podcast, many faculty are hesitant to ask students to pull out their mobile devices in class for fear of distraction. Right or wrong, that fear is pretty common, which is why phone-based systems haven’t made clickers obsolete. Some faculty prefer a single-use device like clickers.
Marilyn J. Staffo - December 8, 2011 at 1:55 pm
Would like a mobile app polling app/site that is very easy for the faculty and student account creation and that will then easily import the results into the LMS course.
Deirdre Bonnycastle - December 8, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Faculty at my medical school use clickers in large classrooms and during videoconferencing VERY successfully. I’m always impressed with the innovations that faculty are making in terms of their use. Our students get angry when profs fail to use them because they like being actively involved and knowing that their opinion matters. We discourage their use for taking attendance and strongly advocate for anonymous use only.
Ben Harwood - December 8, 2011 at 9:56 pm
In defense of the physical clicker which will be with us longer than one might think, how will those teaching in smaller course environments manage concerns of students not paying attention and being distracted by mobile devices in class? It is a fair question…
missymca - December 9, 2011 at 2:08 am
I’m an early adopter at my small private university — first to try clickers. I’m finishing my first semester using clickers in a General Chemistry class of 46 students (a large class for our institution). I liked the immediate feedback — I quickly knew how many students were on the right track and how to address what students were missing. What I didn’t expect was the student reaction — they cheered when 90-100% picked the same answer (presumably the right one?!), and seemed dismayed (as I was!) when student responses were distributed across multiple answers.
I tried giving quizzes via clicker, but I won’t do that going forward. Easy to grade, but difficult to avoid cheating and the panic of “technical problems” that could result in a zero quiz grade. I’ll go back to paper quizzes, but I’ll keep asking clicker questions a few times a week to check in on student understanding. Students seem to appreciate seeing how they “stack up” compared to their classmates.
I have students purchase their own clicker – very few forgot them after the first few classes. Web and mobile apps are tricker, as cell coverage in our building is spotty and wireless is not always strong (wi-fi is also password protected with a timeout function, which would cause lots of challenges).
J. Knott - December 9, 2011 at 10:50 am
I like the idea of students asking questions by typing them into a device. Seems that they have more time to think about what they want to ask, whereas by raising their hand in a classroom they might experience pressure as a distraction to the matter at hand. Additionally, by typing text and words, the student engages verbal skills by making a connection to what they know and don’t know. In this way they are self-learning.
Derek Bruff - December 9, 2011 at 1:18 pm
As I mentioned in the interview, it seems that when we give our students something active and on-topic to do during class (with or without their mobile devices), they tend to spend less class time distracting themselves. And, it seems, taking notes (by hand or on a laptop) isn’t sufficiently active to trigger this effect!
Derek Bruff - December 9, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Thanks for sharing your experiences! It sounds like clickers were a success (on the whole) in your class. The bit about students appreciating the chance to see how they “stack up” to their classmates–that comes out again and again in surveys of students about clickers.