by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
Most classes at UNM will use one kind of clicker starting in August.
Clickers are devices students use to answer multiple-choice questions during class.
The Bookstore sells six clickers for 19 classes, said Melanie Sparks, director of the Bookstore.
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That caused problems, said Gary Smith, director of the Office of Support for Effective Teaching.
"I called it clicker anarchy," he said. "Individual instructors were making choices based on recommendations of textbook vendors, so there were lots of options. Students might have to buy two kinds of clickers in one semester."
UNM signed an agreement with Holtzbrinck Publishers to use the company's iClicker system.
Professors can use other brands if they want, but there are advantages to switching, Smith said.
"If you use the iClicker, you're helping the student, because they'll be able to use it for other classes, too," he said. "It keeps their costs down."
The iClicker costs about $34. The clickers at the Bookstore range from $26.75 to $53.50.
Because most classes will use iClickers, students will be able to sell them back to the Bookstore, Sparks said.
"It will be like your textbooks that are used over and over," she said. "You can get some money back, and students will be able to buy used clickers."
Smith said more professors should use clickers for lecture classes.
"I'm hoping that by making this arrangement, more professors will consider clickers as an option," he said. "I think one of the big struggles at UNM is that we have these large-enrollment courses where students just sit there and are lectured at. Clickers give them a way to participate."
Jane Selverstone, a professor who uses the iClicker for her geology courses with more than 100 students, said she uses it to make sure her students are learning.
"I can see in real time whether students are getting it or not," she said. "I use it as much as a check on my teaching as a check on how my students are doing. If a significant percentage of the class gets the wrong answer, I know I didn't do my job, and I can back up and try to fix it."
The iClicker operates on a radio frequency, instead of an infrared frequency used by older clickers.
That means it doesn't require a line of sight to the receiver.
A large class using infrared clickers needed up to six receivers, Smith said.
"There would be a bunch of receivers and wires and daisy chains going on for one class," he said. "Now there's one little receiver that can get everybody's signal instantaneously."
Although clickers can be used to give quizzes and take attendance, they should be used to make classes better, he said.
For example, a professor could lecture for 20 minutes and then pose questions about the material.
"The best questions are ones that are a little ambiguous and maybe only 50 or 60 percent of the class gets right," he said. "If everyone's divided, it shows that maybe everyone has something to offer."
Then students will discuss the question with each other, and the professor will pose the question again.
"The process of articulating your thoughts to the person next to you helps you understand it," he said. "What often happens is that the second time, you get a strong consensus."
Selverstone said she poses two or three questions per class.
"I try to not to make it rote memorization," she said. "I try to make the questions so the students have to synthesize information we've already been over. I try to really push the students with it."
Selverstone makes her students discuss the questions before answering, she said.
"Students have been incredibly enthusiastic about it," she said. "They like that they have to talk to each other in these big classes where they don't know anyone."
She wasn't always a fan of clickers, she said.
"At first, I thought it was a gimmick, and that it was silly, and that I would have hated it if I was a student," she said. "But I found it was really positive, for the students and for me. I spend a lot more time thinking about what I'm doing in class."
