Student Response Technologies

Courtesy of the College of Arts and Sciences Magazine Nils Halverson, PhD, takes teaching seriously. He has been teaching astrophysics at the University of Colorado since 2005. Using Clickers to Spark Discussion Graduate students may be surprised at first when Halverson asks them to use iclickers in their small, focused...

When we introduce a new pedagogy into the college classroom, how do we know if it's working? In the field of Religious Studies, certain pedagogical approaches are considered tried and true. For example, a mainstay in teaching religion is to engage students in a close reading of a religious text,...

Photo by Micah Sittig “The central finding of physics education research over the past twenty years is something that kindergarten teachers have known forever,” says Dr. Mike Dubson as rain taps against the windows of his office on the tenth floor of the Gamow Physics Tower. “It’s that students don’t...

Dr. E. Scott Adler of the Political Science Department does not consider his use of technology to be particularly innovative. He says it’s not much different than how other professors use technology in their classrooms. What is different about it, though, is how Adler thinks about technology’s interaction with learning...

The average undergraduate today has been learning in front of a screen and typing away at a keypad since early childhood. "I do remember when we still could choose between turning in a typed paper and a handwritten one," says junior Mifa Kim. Yet, most students have never experienced a...

As clickers gain prevalence in the common classroom environment, understanding how to use them efficiently has become increasingly important. On March 16, 2012, Dr. Angel Hoekstra and Dr. Stefanie Mollborn presented at the Teaching with Technology seminar on “pedagogical strategies for teaching with clickers in the social sciences.” At the...

While the idea of using technology as a teaching tool in classrooms holds allure, why use technology if it does not have a positive effect on learning? During his Teaching with Technology presentation, Dr. Tim Weston spoke on the importance of assessment in determining the efficacy of teaching with technology...

In this interactive workshop, we'll explore tips and ideas for incorporating clickers into your particular class. Clickers offer a powerful way to teach science by increasing student engagement -- we have transformed our classrooms by using clickers to promote peer instruction. We'll show research results on the most effective use...

Angel Hoekstra is a graduate student in sociology at CU studying clickers. Her dissertation, “Use of Clickers in Higher Education: A Socio-Cultural Analysis,” analyzed students’ opinions on clicker use in Chemistry and Sociology courses. Her research methods include interviews, observation, and anonymous student responses. Hoekstra reports that “[e]xisting research on...