Clickers are also called “personal response devices” or “polling devices.” A personal response system includes a receiver attached to the classroom computer via USB, along with hand-held clickers that students use to send their responses to the receiver. Under the most typical scenario, an instructor asks a multiple-choice question as part of a PowerPoint presentation, and then s/he starts the polling, allowing students to use the clickers to choose what they think is the correct answer. The receiver records the responses, and the software displays a bar chart indicating what percentage of the students chose each answer. As a result of using clickers in this way, the faculty member can get immediate feedback about how well students are understanding key concepts, allowing him/her to decide (for example) whether s/he needs to explain a concept in more detail or whether s/he can move on to a new topic.
Clickers are often combined with techniques in peer-led instruction. In the scenario described above (a multiple-choice question to which students respond), the faculty member could look at the range of answers and say, “It looks like the class is evenly divided between choices B and C. Talk to your neighbor, and discuss between the two of you how you arrived at your answer.” After that period of discussion, the instructor can poll the question again, to see if the peer-to-peer discussions help students coalesce around the correct answer. When clickers have been combined with such peer-led teaching techniques, the use of clickers has been shown to improve student learning in courses and to increase student engagement during class.
At Bucknell, we use the i>clicker2 brand of clicker and receiver. We have a pool of (approximately 1000) clickers available for students to borrow for the semester, and we also have instructors’ kits that faculty members borrow, containing the receiver that attaches to the computer to record clicker responses.