Classroom Clickers

Classroom Clickers are also known as Personal Response Systems, Electronic or Audience Voting Systems, Classroom Communication Systems, or sometimes the 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' technology. Classroom Clickers provide a fun way to encourage active participation from your audience, gather feedback and easily gauge group-wide understanding.

Students respond to questions posed during a PowerPoint presentation by pressing a button on their clicker. The responses are then detected wirelessly by a special receiver which is connected to the presenter's computer. Responses are instantly compiled by the computer and displayed within the PowerPoint presentation.

What can Classroom Clickers do?

As the presenter, using the Classroom Clickers helps you gauge group-wide understanding, without depending on a select few to determine how your content is being received. They promote active learning which participants find fun, helping them to engage with your material better than if in a passive state.

Polled responses are given in real-time and are easy for you and the participants to understand. Responses are shown for all to see within the PowerPoint presentation, and can help to stimulate discussion. The Classroom Clickers provide a 'safe' way to participate since responses can be submitted anonymously.

Ideas for using Classroom Clickers

  1. When teaching to a new group for the first time, you can use the Classroom Clickers to pose effective 'ice-breaker' questions to find out more about your students and their educational background.
  2.  Teaching a new topic to your students can be difficult if you are unsure about your students' previous knowledge of the subject matter. Use the Classroom Clickers to test pre-conceptions, uncover misconceptions and help you pitch to the right level before you start.
  3. Summary questions can be used when the concentration level of your students start to dwindle.
  4. Although by default the Classroom Clickers are used to vote anonymously, you can set-up Participant Lists to track the performance of individual students over time, rather than analysing results based on the whole class.
  5. Use demographic analysis to compare the results of one interactive question with the results of another, and use any relationship that is found as a starting point for discussion.
  6. Encourage peer-to-peer learning: ask your class to use their clicker to vote on something, display the results, then ask the class to discuss their vote with their neighbour. Re-poll the same question and see how the results have changed as a result of the discussion.
  7. Use Classroom Clickers to encourage preparation / pre-reading before class to help reduce the amount of content to get through in one lecture.
  8. Use Classroom Clickers to monitor attendance (requires that you first set-up a participant list).
  9. Organise your class into teams and set competitions to enhance the learning experience.
  10. Use Classroom Clickers to receive valuable course feedback throughout the duration of your teaching.