January 7, 2009
Learning With 'Clickers' Gets Better After Peer Discussions
College students who use wireless handheld devices called “clickers” to register answers to instructors’ questions during lectures are more likely to give correct responses after discussion with their peers, studies have found. But, researchers wondered, were students improving merely because they copied the answers of fellow students? Or had they actually gained a greater understanding of the material?
The findings of a new study published in the latest issue of Science suggest that improvement after peer discussion reflects real learning. And, surprisingly, students “don’t even need somebody who knows the right answer” in their discussion group in order to do better, says Michelle K. Smith, a research associate in biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder who led the study.
Three hundred and fifty students in a genetics course were first asked to answer a thought-provoking multiple-choice question individually, using a clicker. They were then invited to discuss that question with their neighbors, after which they answered it again. Next, they answered, individually, a second question that required applying the same principles needed to solve the first one.
When students respond to questions using clickers, generally their responses are displayed on a projection screen in the classroom, so instructors can highlight the correct answer. But for this study, the responses to the first question and the right answer were not shown until after students had answered the second question.
On average, the students improved when answering the first question for the second time, from 51 percent correct to 68 percent. But they improved even more when they answered the new, similar question, with 72 percent getting the answer correct. Because the second question was never discussed in peer groups, it could not be answered by copying the response of another student. So the higher rate of success suggests that giving students the opportunity to talk to one another and practice their cognitive skills makes them more prepared to analyze problems, Ms. Smith says.
Although the same peer-discussion method evaluated in the study could be put in place without clickers, students enjoy using the device as long as they’re given challenging questions, Ms. Smith says.
The device is used in college classrooms across the country, especially in large lecture courses in the hard sciences and mathematics, says Jane E. Caldwell, a biology instructor at West Virginia University who has published a paper in CBE—Life Sciences Education reviewing research on clickers. She says the new paper in Science “made a great stride in pinning down the cause of improvement in performance,” showing it was not just the result of “persuasion by bright students that happened to be sitting nearby.”—Ruth Hammond
Posted on Wednesday January 7, 2009 | Permalink |Comments
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This article seems to be quite misleading; the results described in the Science article have little to do with clickers per se – the focus is on the value of discussion. Further, I hope that the Caldwell paper does not take a “clicker-centric” view of the research… what a sad commentary on the quantification of educational research that would be. Please, Ms. Hammond, include a properly formatted reference the the CBE article.
thx
— Edward Jan 7, 05:26 PM #
Here’s a reference for the CBE lit review on clickers:
Caldwell, J.E. (2007). Clickers in the large classroom: Current research and best-practice tips. Life Sciences Education, 6(1), 9-20.
Edward makes a great point that the Science article focuses on the benefits of peer instruction and doesn’t address the roles that clickers play within the peer instruction pedagogy. Ms. Hammond mentions, however, that the pedagogy could be used without clickers.
I would argue that it’s a pedagogy that can be difficult to implement without clickers. Without some way to create accountability for student responses to the questions posed to them, students are often less inclined to engage in the productive peer discussions described in the Science article.
Furthermore, clickers allow students to respond so that they aren’t aware of their peers’ responses. This makes it safer for students to risk being wrong by answering a question during class, therefore theoretically increasing participation and engagement.
— Derek Jan 7, 06:05 PM #
Did the study discuss the relative difficulties of the first and second questions? The study seems so riddled with methodological problems that only the most tentative, carefully qualified conclusions can be drawn.
— Adam Robinson Jan 7, 06:38 PM #
I agree with Adam – the method in use here seems flawed. I wonder, for example, if the same results would be achieved through instructor-led discussion – i.e. question 1; instructor demonstrates with question 2; question 3. All this experiment seems to show is that learning a difficult concept is helped by being able to digest and practice the application of that concept.
— AG Jan 8, 09:15 AM #