Perry Samson, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, liked the concept of personal “clickers” in class, but he felt that they weren’t dynamic enough for the kinds of questions he wanted to ask in his meteorology courses. So he created Web-based software that combine personal-response technology with other kinds of interactive tools that students can use on their laptops in classrooms.
Lecture Tools, the system Mr. Samson created, lets students use their computers during classes to pose anonymous questions, mark up lecture slides, and answer questions posed by the instructor in real time. For meteorology courses, students can answer questions by pinpointing a location on a weather map on their screens, and the answers all show up—anonymously—for everyone to see. He started using the system about five years ago, and now 30 other instructors at Michigan use it, too. It’s most popular among English, political-science, and nursing instructors.
In a study that Mr. Samson based on a survey of about 200 students he taught, he found that about half said that having a laptop in class increased the amount of time they spent on activities unrelated to the lecture. Still, 78 percent said that laptops with the interactive technology made them more engaged in class over all. The study was published in this month’s edition of Computers & Education.
“If the lecture is boring, students are good at understanding when they don’t need to listen,” he said. “I take my laptop to faculty meetings for the same reason.”
Instructors at any institution can download and use Lecture Tools, and while it is currently free, it may not stay that way, Mr. Samson said. Instructors at more than 400 colleges have accounts, though Mr. Samson said he doesn’t know how many of them actually use it.
10 Responses to U. of Michigan Professor Designs Software for Student Engagement
hlsimmons - May 22, 2010 at 10:19 am
simmonshlOn student engagement, why didn’t someone think of this stategy earlier. Most students have laptops now and would be happy to register their engagement with the course in terms of outcomes assessment!
andyhurford - May 24, 2010 at 10:54 am
my advisor developed a similar software system and patented it in 1993.
iteachpsych - May 24, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Great idea, but what about students without laptops? The majority of mine do not.
lexisaro - May 24, 2010 at 10:54 pm
“If the lecture is boring, students are good at understanding when they don’t need to listen,” he said. “I take my laptop to faculty meetings for the same reason.”I would rather my colleagues leave the boring faculty meeting or that my bored students leave the class (or just not come at all), than sit there obnoxiously surfing. It is rude, plain and simple. And distracting to everyone around you. Just as much as opening up the newspaper to read it while sitting there.
11211250 - May 25, 2010 at 7:43 am
Well if they are surfing or reading the paper I see two positives: 1) I haven’t put the to sleep yet and 2) instant feedback. In either case I’d be better off thinking of better ways teach rather than blame the students for being rude.
kymac - May 25, 2010 at 10:49 am
yet another way for students to further withdraw from the realm of actual, accountable, social interaction. Some students are shy, I get it. I was that student. They need to get over it, though, before they get into the work place. I doubt their boss will set up an anonymous question asking device during meetings for stuff they don’t undertstand. Learn to buck up.11211250 – I’m sure all your students are angels and not an ounce of rudeness on their part is their fault! :-/
iggy_ - May 25, 2010 at 10:55 am
iteachpsych: I took a course from Dr. Samson a few years back as an undergrad, while he was still developing this, and I did not have a laptop. He had PDAs available for students to use in lecture, but they weren’t great alternatives, given their small size and low resolution. The bigger issue is that the lecture would start and stop while waiting for student feedback, so we covered less material than in most of my courses, and I eventually started bringing unrelated reading material to lecture because I’d input my response then have to wait for the stragglers. It was definitely a solid way to learn and for the prof to get instant feedback, but it takes a lot of skill to be able to incorporate it seamlessly into the lecture. But at the least, it’s a huge improvement over those silly clickers.
lexisaro - May 25, 2010 at 11:33 pm
“Well if they are surfing or reading the paper I see two positives: 1) I haven’t put the to sleep yet and 2) instant feedback. In either case I’d be better off thinking of better ways teach rather than blame the students for being rude.”Hogwash! Do you start yawning in front of your friends when they go on too long? Turn up the TV when your spouse bores you? Pull out a magazine when meeting with your Dean? Of course not- you’d be a rude jerk for doing so. I work really hard at adjusting my pedagogical approach and maintaining high student engagement, and my strong teaching eavluations reflect that. However, my job is not to entertain to compete with computer games, chat and youtube when I’m teaching a class or running a meeting. Not everything is or should be wow, fun, holds your attention like the latest Lady Gaga video, dressing malfunction reported on yahoo news, or crap reality TV show. A bit of effort and respect on the part of the student is necessary as well. I show respect for my students and I expect them to show respect for one another and myself as well.
wmcallister - June 6, 2010 at 11:59 am
The idea that it’s beneficial to provide students with an opportunity to disengage from a lecture is something I don’t agree with. Although there have been claims that the digital native generation are great multitaskers I’ve found that they are not, as evidenced by a repeated question I just answered while they are texting or surfing. I agree that the remedy for boredom is to improve the pedagogy, and I would suggest we lock up the internet access ’till it’s needed during the lecture. In an ongoing clicker study involving 10 faculty members and 15 class sections we have found most professors when using clickers covered less material, and they has no affect on student outcomes.
s_chasteen - June 21, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I like the ability to ink-up lecture slides like this and make it more dynamic. I just wrote about another (free) tool developed to allow students and instructors to interactively mark up slides — http://theactiveclass.com/2010/05/27/powerpoint-meets-chalk-ubiquitous-presenter/.As frustrating as it is, the truth is that students are often off-task if they are not interactively engaged in the lecture. We have a limited attention span, and our cognitive load is usually exceeded in every lecture or talk. Interactive techniques like this (or like clickers) can help students process the information that they’re getting. They may be tuning out because they’re lazy (there’s always some of those) or because they don’t understand what’s going on and figure they’ll learn it out of class. We have few posts on engaging students using clickers and other techniques here: http://theactiveclass.com/.