Something smaller than a credit card is changing the environment in the classroom.

In an analysis of “clicker technology” use at Northwestern University, Denise Drane, associate director of research and evaluation at the University's Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, and visiting learning scientist Yifat Kolikant Ben-David conclude that the system affects professors as well as students.

“Clicker technology can dramatically alter the atmosphere in large lecture classes, transforming students from passive observers to engaged learners who interact with each other and with the professor,” said Drane. “It also encourages teachers to develop new strategies to support the new learning environment,” referred to as PRS, Personal Response System.

Steven Duke, managing director of training with the Media Management Center and the Readership Institute and a lecturer in the Medill School of Journalism, is one of a growing number of Northwestern instructors who use PRS to enliven class and provide instant feedback of the effectiveness of their teaching and their students' level of understanding.

“I taught Introduction to 21st Century Media for the first time in the fall,” said Duke. This large survey course for freshmen meets for three hours a week. “I can't just lecture for that long, so I used a variety of tools and techniques to break up the day and maintain interest. The clicker was one of those,” he said.

Through trial and error, Duke learned to use the clicker in short bursts. “Instead of making a clicker quiz a stand-alone element of the three-hour block, I would insert a small number of response items into a lecture at intervals,” he said. “Students could make instant choices and see how their selections matched those of other students.”

The clicker technology, first introduced at Northwestern in fall of 2005, consists of a software component - TurningPoint -- which launches PowerPoint. Instructors pose multiple choice or true/false questions to the class via PowerPoint slides. Students respond anonymously by using a remote control (clicker) device. Responses are transmitted to the system, automatically tallied and presented in a histogram that shows the distribution of responses for each multiple choice option. Responses are also stored automatically and can be reviewed in subsequent classes or analyzed later by the instructor.

Each clicker has buttons (keys) in the following layout:

1/A 2/B 3/C 4/D 5/E 6/F 7/G 8/H 9/I GO 0/J ?

So what brought clickers to campus? “Textbook publishers were bundling clicker-type products with the books,” said Mary Schuller, manager of faculty support services with Academic Technologies, a division of IT. Eventually four different clicker systems were in use at Northwestern, so the University invited vendors to campus to present their products. TurningPoint software was chosen as the University standard in fall 2006 because it's easy to use and offers a quick response, said Schuller.

The software is provided free to faculty, and the clickers, which students must purchase, are available for under $50 at local bookstores. Until the end of summer quarter 2007, instructors can pilot the PRS system for up to three weeks by requesting a loaner kit consisting of a software installation CD, 60 clickers and a receiver. Schuller estimates that more than a dozen faculty borrowed the loaner kit in 2006-07. Instructors interested in purchasing the PRS receiver should contact elearning@northwestern.edu.

The current system is geared to multiple choice and true/false questions and cannot support open-ended questions, but improvements will be in place for fall 2007, Schuller said. Updates will include an LCD screen and memory, so students can “type” messages and submit homework. This improved technology will open doors to more departments at Northwestern. Currently the chemistry department is the biggest user, but interest is spreading to other departments and schools including psychology and Kellogg.

Suzanne Olds, professor of biomedical engineering, is a pioneer of the clicker system, having used it in her biothermodynamics class since fall 2002. She is quick to point out the improvements to the speed of the system over the past year and favors PRS because it keeps students engaged and focused, encourages discussion and helps determine the pace of the instruction.

Olds' students concur. Jigar Choskey, a senior biomedical engineering and economics major, said, “PRS is an amazing piece of technology that encourages class participation and helps identify areas of the course that we didn't understand. Then the professor can go over the concepts.”

Adrienne Hart Smith, a biomedical engineering junior, said, “I benefited academically from using the clickers. In a class like thermodynamics, it is easy to just copy down the equations and think you understand them. But using the clickers shows you if you really understand what is being discussed. It helped me get answers to questions as we were learning the material instead of a few days before the midterm.”

Martina Bode, senior lecturer of mathematics, uses clickers in a different way in her calculus classes. “I divide students into teams and have them work together. The peer discussions in teams is what makes clickers so valuable,” she said, adding that she offers prizes for the winning team, great motivation for the students.

When Bode polled students about using clickers, 90 percent said the system increases instructor awareness about the effectiveness of their teaching, and 80 percent said interactive questions helps them better understand the subject matter.

For Arthur Schmidt, a physics and astronomy lecturer, PRS helped improve his teaching. “I am not one to jump quickly on the bandwagon of new, dazzling technology, but this was a no-brainer. In keeping with recent suggestions in the education literature for good pedagogy, I had been employing a teaching technique in which I would pause periodically during the lecture and frame a question based on the material we were covering. I would poll the class to see if they understood the material. I would encourage discussion before voting and then ask for a raise of hands for the students to choose among possible answers.

“I liked the idea of taking a break in the lecture and getting everyone involved in the class. I was apprehensive about putting students on the spot among their peers and wondered how honestly they answered. The clickers -- with the anonymity of responses -- came as an obvious solution.

“The extreme value is that the clickers change the way students approach class time. Misconceptions can be corrected while the material is fresh, and students leave class with a more solid understanding from which to build on by further studying,” Schmidt said.

For Drane, these faculty validations support her conclusion that the PRS system “acts as a powerful catalyst for transformation of faculty, moving them from teacher-centered conceptions and approaches to student-centered conceptions and approaches.”

With the improvements in the system incorporated over the summer, Schuller expects three times more faculty to use the system next year.