Interactive technology changes classroom experience at colleges: You know those things people used to vote on America’s Funniest Home videos? Apparently they’ve made their way into college classrooms now.

[…] in 90 seconds, [the professor] had roughly 150 student responses displayed on an overhead screen, plotted as a multicolored bar graph — 64 percent, yes, 35 percent, no.

The devices, called “clickers” by Cheit’s students, are increasingly finding their way into college classrooms and are being used on hundreds of campuses. Users say they change the classroom dynamic, providing a way to get feedback and engage students in large, impersonal lecture halls. They also say they provide a way around students’ fear of giving a wrong answer in front of their peers, or of expressing unpopular opinions.

Comments

1. Comment by Matthew Carrick, May 9, 2005 5:46 pm

   And the remaining 1% were trying to hack the device in order to screw up the whole system.

2. Comment by Matthew Cox, May 9, 2005 10:26 pm

   In our county, these devices are used at the middle school and high school level as well.

3. Comment by Matthew Loar, May 10, 2005 3:43 pm

   We used one of those in my CS 173 class. Thing is, they didn’t work too well, the instructor used them to take attendance, and they just ended up wasting time that would have been better spent actually teaching the material.

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