Increasing Student Engagement and Comprehension with Clickers

Giovanni Bonaiuti, Università di Cagliari, Dipartimento di pedagogia, psicologia, filosofia
Giovanni Bonaiuti, Università di Cagliari
Antonio Calvani, Università di Firenze
Danilo Piazza, Collegio Villoresi - Monza
Increasing classroom engagement and students
comprehension through the use of clickers:
an Italian secondary school experience
2013 ATEE Winter Conference
Learning & Teaching with Media & Technology
Genova 8 March 2013

1. What are clickers?
2. How can they be used?
3. Researches findings
4. Our research
Outline

What are clickers?
• Clickers are handheld devices that looks like a TV remote
• They allow each student to respond to the teacher's questions during a lesson

Different type of clickers
- Basic set of buttons
- Without display
- Regular set of buttons
- Small display
- Full keyboard
- Large display
There are many types of clickers that allow different uses, like:
- yes/no response
- multiple choices response
- free-text response

Collect and display information
• Software on the teacher’s computer collects the students’ answers
• The teacher can decide to show the data to the class via computer projector
• For example it could be produced a bar chart showing how many students
chose each of the answer choices or other graphical representation of data.

A typical learning cycle
Teacher poses
questions
Students use
clicker handheld to
respond
Responses are
transmitted to the
teacher’s computer
Teacher visualizes
the answers
eventually displayed
to the class

Pedagogical framework
Common uses are the following:
• to increase or manage interaction (i.e. start a discussions or collect votes
after a debate)
• to assess students preparation for formative (diagnostic) or summative
purpose;
• to find out more about students (i.e. polling student opinions or probing
students’ pre-existing level of understanding)
• to guide thinking, leading students through a multistep process by asking
which step should come next
• to make lecture fun.

Types of questions
Recall
Questions
recall facts
concepts
techniques
relevant to
class
Application
Questions
apply their
knowledge
understanding
to particular
situations and
contexts
Critical
Thinking
analyze
relationships
among multiple
concepts
make
evaluations
based on
particular criteria
Student
Perspective
Questions
students share
their opinions
experiences
demographic
information
Monitoring
Questions
how students
are approaching
the learning
process
It is possible to use clickers with different type of questions, for example:

Why should they be used?
The literature suggests that they can be used to:
• maintain students’ attention and promote active engagement during a lecture;
• encourage participation from every student in a class;
• allow anonymous, simultaneous, and fast response;
• obtain feedbacks and track students comprehension;
• collecting opinions and encourages follow-up discussion;
• create a safe space for shy and unsure students to participate in class;
• add a little fun to the classroom.

Research findings
• Since international research has emphasized the importance of feedback in
education, there has been a growing interest in clickers.
• Effective forms of feedback provide cues or reinforcement to the learner as
well as from the learner to the teacher (Hattie, 2009).
• Teacher requires a continuous feedback from learners to know whether they
are following the lecture, if they understand it or if it is being delivered at the
adequate pace (Zarraonandia et al., 2010).
• Even though it is clear that numerous methods allow for increasing active
student responding and the associated feedback opportunities, it was
recognized that clickers can improve teacher feedback practice in many ways:
– engaging students,
– providing immediate feedback to everyone (also in large settings),
– allowing students response data to be automatically collected,
– increasing the likelihood that a shy or reticent student will participate
(Lantz, 2010)

Our research
Our research took place in Collegio
Villoresi S. Giuseppe a school of Monza
in the north of Italy

Research questions
• Clickers are mainly used in large classrooms situation and at college level.
• Our research aims to verify whether the clickers are a way to improve
attention, participation and learning also in a small classes environment and in
a first grade secondary school level.
• To do this we compared two different situations that use "questioning methods"
to foster learning:
– Questions and answers by “hand-raising”
– Questions and answers with clickers

Participants
• The study took place in the school year 2012-2013 in five sections of a first
grade secondary school at Collegio Villoresi of Monza
• Participants in this study included:
– 92 students (12–14 years old)
– 5 teachers (2 grammar teachers, 3 history teachers)

Procedures
"B" Situation
Two lessons with clickers
"A" Situation
Two lessons without clickers

Introduction.
Q&A on previous lectures
(5 minutes)
Teacher explanation (3 min.)
Questions and answers
(2 minutes)
Student's understanding test
(up to 10 minutes)
Schematic representation of process
"B" Situation
with clickers
"A" Situation
without clickers
Both experiences have provided students the same number of interactions with teachers:
• in the first case with questions and answers (“hand-raising condition”),
• in the second case with the use of SRSs (“technological condition”).
8 times

Results
• Our research attest that in a normal class discussion situation (without clickers)
only few students have the opportunity to answer a question.
• Classroom observation in the "A conditions" situations shown that 23% of
students answer only one time (Mean=1.41 answers, DS=1.25)
• In the "B conditions" (two lessons with clickers) 100% of participant answer to
all questions (more than 8 questions each hour)

ES = 0,32

ES = -0,50

Summary of findings
• We verify that students and teachers like clickers use
• Clickers provide a "safe" way for shy students to participate in classroom
discussion. Because of the anonymity, students feel safe to participate
• In the "hand raising" situations only few students answer the questions
– even if the answer is correct, the instructor has no way to gauge if the
other students knew the correct answer;
– a student who is unsure of the correct answer may be unwilling to take the
public risk of being incorrect.
• Even though, at the end of the experience, our teachers have highlighted some
challenges :
– using clickers in class takes up class time
– writing effective multiple-choice questions can be a tough job
– leading class-wide discussions can be challenging for teachers used to just
lecturing
– for the students the fun can lead to loss of concentration

Issues
• Results are consistent with other researches, which forecast students in
technological conditions are more cognitively engaged during learning;
participants also reported greater positive emotions during the lecture and
were more likely to respond fairly to in-class review questions.
• Although the present study provides some indication about the students, in the
clicker conditions, are more involved results about the in learning are not clear
• Data show small learning gain in grammar (ES=0.32), worst results in history
(ES= -0.50)
• It seems that the use of clickers could be influenced by the subject matter and,
conceivably, by the type of specific topic. In fact the arguments in grammar
were more clearly defined and the questions were much more precise than in
history
• We believe that this technology offers great potential also in a small classes
and in a lower grade settings but further researches are needed to investigate
the underlying mechanisms.

References
Caldwell, J. E. (2007). Clickers in the large classroom: current research and best-practice tips. CBE life sciences education, 6(1),
9–20.
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York, NY: Routledge.
Herreid, C. F. (2006). “Clicker” Cases : Introducing Case Study Teaching Into Large Classrooms. Library.
Lantz, M. E. (2010). The use of “Clickers” in the classroom: Teaching innovation or merely an amusing novelty? Computers in
Human Behavior, 26(4), 556–561.
Mayer, R. E., Stull, A., DeLeeuw, K., Almeroth, K., Bimber, B., Chun, D., Bulger, M., et al. (2009). Clickers in college classrooms:
Fostering learning with questioning methods in large lecture classes. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34(1), 51–57.
Mestre, J. P., Gerace, W. J., Dufresne, R. J., & Leonard, W. J. (1997). Promoting active learning in large classes using a classroom
communication system. In E. F. Redish & J. S. Rigden (Eds.), Journal of Consumer Research (Vol. 2, pp. 1019–1036). American
Institute of Physics.
Mollborn, S., & Hoekstra, A. (2010). “A Meeting of Minds”: Using Clickers for Critical Thinking and Discussion in Large Sociology
Classes. Teaching Sociology, 38(1), 18–27.
Morling, B., McAuliffe, M., Cohen, L., & DiLorenzo, T. M. (2008). Efficacy of Personal Response Systems (“Clickers”) in Large,
Introductory Psychology Classes. Teaching of Psychology, 35(1), 45–50.
Nicol, D. J., & Boyle, J. T. (2003). Peer Instruction versus Class-wide Discussion in Large Classes: A comparison of two interaction
methods in the wired classroom. Studies in Higher Education, 28(4), 457–473.
Penuel, W. R., Boscardin, C. K., Masyn, K., & Crawford, V. M. (2006). Teaching with student response systems in elementary and
secondary education settings: A survey study. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55(4), 315–346.
Trees, A. R., & Jackson, M. H. (2007). The learning environment in clicker classrooms: student processes of learning and
involvement in large university level courses using student response systems. Learning, Media and Technology, 32(1), 21–40.
Zarraonandia, T., Francese, R., Passero, I., Díaz, P., & Tortora, G. (2011). Augmented lectures around the corner? British Journal
of Educational Technology, 42(4), E76–E78.

Thanks for your attention
g.bonaiuti@unica.it

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