Teaching Large Classes with Clickers: Results from a Teaching Experiment in Comparative Politics

Marcela Velasco, Gamze Çavdar
2013 PS: Political Science and Politics  
AbstractInstant-response technologies, or clickers, are student response devices that help address some of the challenges involved in teaching large classes, namely student motivation and engagement with the material. This article evaluates a diverse set of teaching and learning strategies enabled by clicker technology and their impact on student learning. We highlight five aspects of teaching that are enhanced by the use of clickers, describe an experiment comparing student performance in
more » ... tional and clicker lectures, and report results of a survey of student perception about the effects of this technology on motivation, learning, and engagement. We argue that while the use of clickers is time-consuming for the instructor and presents a steep learning curve, clickers improve teaching effectiveness in large classes and hold promise for increasing student learning.
doi:10.1017/s1049096513001121 fatcat:2auukwdbzfhc3ixeou7krsw4i4