Clickers + the State of the Union Address

Here’s a nice follow-up to my previous post about backchannel use during live performances.  Over at Abilene Christian University, where all the students (more or less) have iPhones, a group of students were given extra credit for watching the recent State of the Union address by US President Barack Obama.  However, they didn’t just watch it; they responded to clicker questions asked by their instructor on-the-fly during the speech.  The students used their iPhones to respond to these questions, but any kind of classroom response system would do the trick for something like this.  This seems like a great way to use some student perspective questions to help students engage more meaningfully with a live broadcast of this nature. (You may recall that I mentioned some universities that did something similar during the 2008 presidential debates.)

ACU also thought ahead to video the evening!