Clicking in the Community College Classroom: Assessing the Effectiveness of Clickers on Student Learning in a General Psychology Course.

The present study examined the efficacy of clickers in a community college classroom. Specifically we sought to compare the effects of clicker technology on perceived knowledge and exam scores with the effectiveness of essays and pop quizzes. One hundred students completed surveys measuring presemester motivation to take psychology and baseline psychology knowledge. Regression analyses found that after controlling for motivation and baseline knowledge, students in the essay and pop quiz conditions reported greater perceived comprehension of the material as compared with the students in the clicker condition for two of the three exams. Additionally, students who wrote essays and took pop quizzes on the course material subsequently scored higher on the cumulative exam than did students in the clicker class, although there were no differences across conditions on Exam I and Exam 2 scores. Similarly, there were no significant differences across conditions on any of the exam scores when extra credit was factored into the grades. Implications for future research are discussed. ********** Clickers are an interactive technology through which instructors present questions to students and the entire class receives immediate feedback on students' responses (Fies & Marshall, 2006). These questions are generally incorporated ahead of time into the instructors' PowerPoint slides and a visual representation of students' responses is immediately displayed on the larger screen. Thus, for factually based questions, the entire class can immediately discover the percentage of students that answered the questions correctly (Beekes, 2006; Berry, 2009; Mastoridis & Kladidis, 2010; Shapiro &. Gordon, 2012). This is intended to provide immediate feedback to both instructors and students concerning the degree to which students are grasping central course concepts. This technology can also be used to more confidentially gather and spark a classroom discussion about students' attitudes toward sensitive topics (Gill, Myerson, St El-Rady, 2006). Moreover, the anonymity of clicker responses affords quieter students the opportunity to answer questions more frequently and is likely to decrease conformity to the ideas of those few students who tend to dominate classroom discussions (Beekes, 2006; Connor, 2009; Stowell, Oldham, St Bennett, 2010). Ideally, these individualized response systems help students to remain focused and engaged with the course material, and they enable instructors to ascertain those areas in which students need additional practice and explanation (Shapiro St Gordon, 2012). Given the possibility that clickers will become as ubiquitous as PowerPoint and video clips in higher education classrooms, research into the degree to which they truly facilitate students' learning is needed (Hatch, Jensen, St Moore, 2005; Kenwright, 2009). Furthermore, there is a scarcity of research of clickers in community colleges. This paper intends to fill that gap. Attitudes About Clickers Many studies reveal students' positive attitudes about the use of clickers in the classroom and show mixed results concerning whether or not clickers really enhance students' retention of core course concepts (Epstein et al, 2002; Mastoridis & Kladidis, 2010; Sepideh & Wayne, 2013; Shapiro & Gordon, 2012). Students overwhelmingly report that they enjoy using clickers, feel satisfied with the use of clickers in the classroom, feel more confident in their knowledge as the result of using clickers in the classroom, and find them "fun" to use (Berry, 2009; Bojinova & Oigara, 2011; Milner-Bolotin, Antimirova, & Petrov, 2010). Moreover, students' beliefs that clickers enhance their learning and facilitate a sense of camaraderie among classmates is well documented in the literatures (Bojinova & Oigara, 2011; Mastoridis & Kladidis, 2010; Hatch, Jensen, & Moore, 2005; Wit, 2003). In one study of undergraduate medical students using clickers, most agreed or strongly agreed with statements such as "I believe clickers make lectures a more enjoyable experience," "I believe clickers enhance my level of concentration during a lecture," and "I believe clickers should have a permanent role in undergraduate medical education" (Mastoridis & Kladidis, 2010, p. …