Supporting Faculty Use of Clickers

Last month, I facilitated an online workshop on teaching with clickers for the TLT Group.  We spent some time in the workshop focusing first on what I’ve been calling “learning trajectories” around faculty use of clickers: How do instructors new to clickers usually use them?  How do instructors change their approach to using clickers over time?  What are some roadblocks that instructors experience when experimenting with clickers?  How is teaching with clickers informed by beliefs about teaching and learning?  How does it inform those beliefs?

With some possible answers to those questions in mind, the workshop participants and I brainstormed ways to support instructors using clickers.  Below you’ll find my summary of those ideas.  I think it’s a useful menu of options for encouraging and supporting clicker use.

Peer Support

• Encourage faculty with experience teaching with clickers to mentor faculty new to clickers. (This was cited by several groups as the most effective method.)
• Encourage faculty not using clickers to visit the classes of faculty using clickers and discuss clickers afterward.
• Encourage faculty who use clickers to team-teach courses to show their colleagues how clickers can work in the classroom.
  

Learning Communities

• Assemble working groups of faculty teaching similar courses to create question banks collaboratively.
• Create a faculty learning community consisting of faculty from different disciplines interested in teaching with clickers, perhaps with a focus on SoTL with or about clickers.
• Gather faculty using clickers for a lunch near the end of the semester where they can share their experiences with each other.

Online Resources

• Create an online, collaborative workspace (e.g. a wiki) where faculty can share clicker questions, uses, and resources.
• Create department question banks that all faculty in a department can draw from and contribute to.
• Find and share short online videos about teaching and learning with clickers, particularly ones featuring interviews with faculty and students.
• Direct faculty to published articles on teaching with clickers in their disciplines.

Increasing Exposure

• Have faculty share their uses of clickers in “showcase” events for other faculty.
• Highlight faculty using clickers in newsletters and on Web sites.
• Use clickers creatively in workshops on other teaching topics as well as other events attended by faculty (e.g. new faculty orientation, faculty meetings) to expose faculty to them and model their use.

Workshops on Clickers

• When holding workshops on teaching with clickers, be sure to share concrete examples of discipline-specific clicker questions and uses.
• When holding workshops, start by having faculty use clickers as they would if they were students.
• Hold regular workshops on teaching with clickers so that faculty can attend when they have time.

Miscellaneous

• Encourage or require faculty using clickers (either by ordering clickers through the bookstore or by borrowing a kit) to attend a training workshop.
• Have tech support in a faculty member’s classroom the first time s/he uses clickers.  If this support person can also discuss clicker pedagogy with the faculty member after class, all the better.
• Work with institutional research groups to collect and share data (quantitative, qualitative) on clicker usage and faculty and student perceptions of clickers.

Which of these do you think would be most effective at your institution?