Four years ago, MIT Sloan professor Jim Orlin began using a tablet PC in his lectures and the results were dramatic and positive. The expanded features of the tablet PC transformed Orlin’s use of PowerPoints. What was formerly a one-way broadcast-type presentation —frequently interrupted by trips to the blackboard — is now a seamless process whereby the tablet takes on the role of presentation medium as well as annotation device. Formulas, illustrations, and other clarifying notes can be written directly on the slide, thus eliminating the disruption of switching between mediums as well as serving to unify the delivery mode for the students.
'Clickers'
Orlin has also experimented with Personal Response Systems (PRS) but with mixed success. Typically viewed as a low threshold technology, Orlin assumed that PRSs would be easy to adopt and relatively unobtrusive in the classroom. However, his experience indicated otherwise.
In 2006 Orlin, with help from OEIT’s Phil Long, implemented a PRS pilot in his class. His goal was to use PRSs (aka “clickers”) to better gauge student understanding of concepts presented in class.
A clicker is a wireless hand-held device that uses RF to transmit responses from students to the instructor. Each student uses a clicker to respond to questions or surveys sent from the instructor during class. According to the instructor’s preference, clicker responses may or may not be tied to a specific student, thus allowing the option to track individual responses. Typically a query from the instructor is in the format of true/false or multiple-choice. All responses are aggregated, tabulated and then graphically displayed by software on the instructor’s computer in a matter of seconds. The clicker therefore functions as a quick and efficient way for teachers to get immediate feedback from their students.
The PRS vendor sponsored the first phase of the pilot, and thus freed Orlin and the students from bearing the cost of the new devices and accompanying software. The implementation of the first phase was limited to the recitation sections, and primarily used by Mike Metzger, the course’s teaching assistant.
The first phase of the pilot seemed to go well. Orlin: “Mike used clickers on a regular basis, generally by asking students questions on the fly. These were usually unprepared and…Mike thought the clickers were great. Mike’s a great TA, so the students really liked him, though they didn’t comment specifically on clickers.”
Orlin then decided to continue to the second phase of the pilot: using clickers in his lectures. For this phase, the students paid a small fee ($35) for the units, and Orlin’s department paid for the RF technology and software on Orlin’s laptop. From Orlin’s perspective, the experiment went well. The clickers gave him useful feedback about how well his students were grasping the material and he was able to gear his in-class remarks accordingly.
At the end of the semester, however, Orlin was surprised to learn that the students had not perceived the same value. The results from his survey were astounding: “almost all the students said the clickers were useless.” He delved further and got one insightful interpretation from a student: “looking at it from the student’s viewpoint, what do they get out of the clickers? They get to show you that they were wrong.” Orlin countered that the clickers gave him useful information for gauging the level of class understanding. The student responded that most faculty can learn how to ‘read’ a class without the assistance of a clicker system. Additionally, students don’t want to participate in a system where they’re pointing out what they don’t know.
Because of this, Orlin decided to abandon the clicker pilot. Although PRS technology gave him immediate insight about student comprehension, this small benefit could not justify the effort or cost, especially given the negative perception of the students.
On reflection, Orlin also realized it was difficult to explore the full range of possibilities that clickers offer. In other settings, using them for consensus building, opinion sharing or polling for statistics and trends has proved successful. For Orlin, however, the technical nature of his course was limited to primarily right or wrong questions.
Future Plans
Orlin has continued to look for additional learning opportunities. He is currently exploring the possibility of placing a portion of the technical content of his course in a format that could be absorbed out of class, thus freeing in-class time for other activities. “What I plan to do in the future is take a quarter of the material I present in class, which is of a pretty technical nature, and put it on the Web where they can do it at their own pace, but still have it as a course requirement… it would be… comparable…to being in class except that it would be self-paced.”
Migrating technical material to a web-based format would free up class time for more interactive activities. Using the web in this manner is changing the scope and purpose of in-class time, offering opportunities to explore areas hitherto unavailable.
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