Student Response Systems - "Clickers"

The Center for Teaching is hosting a visit by Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics & Applied Physics, Harvard University. For two days, April 29th and 30th, he will host three presentations (descriptions listed below).  For more information, visit the Center for Teaching’s website.

Using Technology to Engage Students
Active learning and more direct interaction between students and instructors can help address issues such as declining enrollments, low attendance, poor evaluations, and disappointing retention. Dr. Mazur will demonstrate some of the tools developed to foster engaged learning.

The Make-Believe World of Real-World Physics: A Public Lecture
Despite tireless efforts by physics instructors to connect course content to the real world, students walk away from physics courses believing physicists live in a world of their own. Are students clueless about the real world? Or are we perhaps deluding ourselves and misleading our students about the real world?

Research as a Basis for Course Design
Our intuition often supplants a systematic, scientific approach to finding out what works and what doesn’t work in teaching. Yet research demonstrates that our gut feelings about teaching are often wrong. This presentation will showcase a method developed by Dr. Mazur to mine information about his students’ learning using a course management tool and just-in-time teaching.

Posted: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 (Story link)

Our next UI clicker users group meeting will be held on February 26th from 1:00 to 3:30pm in the University Capitol Centre, room 2390 (which is located at the top of the escalator near T-Spoons).

During this meeting, Liz Pearce will present on “Clicking for Higher Level Thinking Skills”

Summary:  It’s easy to design clicker questions to test recall, but much more difficulty to design questions that facilitate higher level thinking skills.  This  participatory session will focus on strategies for designing questions that move toward understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.  Participants will be encouraged to share questions and strategies.

We would like to thank those of you who came for our January meeting, and look forward to meeting those who attend our next session.

And mark your calendars for our remaining User Group meetings: March 26th, April 23rd, and May 28th.

Posted: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 (Story link)

We recomend checking out Derek Bruff’s blog: Teaching with Classroom Response Systems if you would like more information about using clickers in your courses.  The blog provides a wealth of ideas for using clickers from a number of instructors from a variety of fields.

Posted: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 (Story link)