PRS

With classroom response, you pose multiple-choice or true-false questions to your class, and students use personal transmitters or “clickers” to send private responses.

Students are therefore much less reluctant to respond in class, and even find it fun to participate. More importantly, they are engaged in a way that encourages them to think more deeply about the class presentation.

A receiver attached to your computer collects student responses. The classroom response software tabulates the responses and displays a summary as a graph, which you can use to stimulate class discussion and thereby greater understanding. For example, when there is no consensus on the answer, a common practice is to use peer instruction, where the students talk to their immediate neighbors about their answers, after which you re-ask the question.

Questions don't necessarily have to have a correct answer, either. Indeterminate or controversial subjects can be introduced by first displaying student opinions on the matter. You might then ask one representative from each perspective to hold forth; from the graph, they know they have some supporters in the room!

While student responses are private, they are not necessarily anonymous; you can choose to track student identity for monitoring, attendance, or grading purposes. A roster for designated classes can be quickly downloaded and applied to the classroom response software.

You can hear more about classroom response in this NPR story. You can also read more about its effectiveness in this Science research study.