Click Now: Integrating Clickers into Library Instruction (VLA 2010)

1. Click Now: Integrating Clickers into Library Instruction(VLA 2010) Gail Flatness, Marymount University Mary Hanlin, Tidewater Community College, mhanlin@tcc.edu or (757) 822.2133 Barbara Siller, Marymount University

2. What best describes your position • Teaching Librarian • Instructional Technologist • Other librarian • Teaching/Research Faculty • Administrator • Other

3. Where do you work? • College/University Library • Public Library • School • Other

4. Have you taught using an audience response system? • Yes • No

5. Rate your ability to use an audience response system • No experience • Beginner • Moderate • Pretty good • Expert user

6. What is an Audience Response System

7. CLICKERS is a generic term for: • Audience Response System (ARS) • Classroom Response System (CRS) • Classroom Performance system (CPS) • Personal Response System (PRS) • Student Response System (SRS)

8. Audience response systems can be useful for • Engaging students • Motivating students • Obtaining rapid feedback • Assessment of an LI program • All of the above

9. Types of Questions • Demographic • Assess level of pre-knowledge • Self or pre-test • Recall • Assess ongoing learning in class • Conceptual • Promote Discussion • Formal assessment • Post test Questions: Demographic Recall Conceptual

10. Audience Response systems in LI enhances student motivation to learn • True • False

11. Maximize your success • Have clear learning objectives and idea of how clickers can support • Design good questions • Allow extra time in class • Practice • Test each classroom • Allow extra time before and after class • Explain to students why and what you are doing

12. More Advice • Show question before deliver possible answers • Don’t show results as voting • Discussion: all partly right. Show question vote; discuss; vote again and then show answers. • Polling:

13. Advantages to clickers • Active learning • Good in large classrooms, especially if no chance for practice • Quick gauge of understanding • Assessment • Formative and summative • Foster discussion • Give students voice in what will be taught

14. Disadvantages • Takes time in class • Cover less content • May not cover all learning objectives if students feedback shows there are problems • Technology can be an issue if • you teach in many different rooms and students not used to using clickers • you are not comfortable with technology • Difficult in one shot LI to get “deeper” learning

15. What have you liked most about VLA so far? (Clickers responses are anonymous.) • The speakers. • The sessions. • The vendors. • The food. 35 Mean =

16. Assessment Using Clickers • Formative Assessment: Can be used to very quickly determine how to reframe and adapt class content. • Summative Assessment: Can evaluate overall learning outcomes and combine data from multiple classes. • Learning outcomes: Can create consistent and standardized learning goals and while focusing on what students really need to know for a particular class. • Data: Can capture measurable and quantifiable student knowledge/learning.

17. What I do: • I begin with a few clicker questions to gauge extant student knowledge. • Based on responses of first few questions, I determine what to focus on. • Not using clickers: I have the student spend most of her/his time working on prepared searches, and then do their own searches. • I return to a “clicker quiz” at the end.

18. Clicker Philosophy • I try to be consistent with the questions I ask and only occasionally revise the questions. • I generally only use clickers if I have an 1:15 minute class. • I focus on using them in Freshman Composition classes and do not use them with Developmental classes. • Try to focus more on students conducting their own research, rather than using the clickers.

19. Formative Assessment • Using “clickers” in the first few slides, serves to • 1. engage them early on • 2. Quickly determine what they really know. • Using “clickers” early on and letting them know that there will be a “clicker” quiz at the end, makes them more vested in the learning process.

20. Beginning with questions, you may not think they can answer.

21. Summative Assessment • Can be used to aggregate student responses from many different classes. • Can suggest over time what is being retained and what is being lost. • Can allow the librarian to change her pedagogy focusing more on the areas that students conceptually struggle with.

22. Learning Outcomes: • Learning Outcomes (my definition): What you want the student to learn and why you want the student to learn it. • Allow the instructor to implement standardized learning goals without focusing too much time on the things students already know.

23. Data: • Generally speaking, it takes less time to conduct a clicker quiz that to have students respond to a “grade-able” paper quiz. • Data are incredibly easy to produce with clicker software. • Provides a quantifiable way of showing that the students not only “liked” something, but learned something. • Can be used to clearly articulate the viability of library instruction. • Aren’t methodologically sound to be used as a scientific instrument of assessment.

24. Some final practical observations: • Clickers can be overused and may be a technology that students become bored with. • A computer needs at least two gigs of RAM to work well with clickers. • The clickers’ batteries die after two years but can easily be replaced. • Slides sometimes freeze, especially at the end, so save data as soon as you are finished conducting session. • Overall, they are worth learning and using, but consider the context before you determine their use.

25. What more would you like to know about clickers? • How to actually create clicker slides and conduct assessment. • What they cost. • What type of brands to consider. • Nothing. :35

26. Thanks Again Gail Flatness, Marymount University Mary Hanlin, Tidewater Community College, mhanlin@tcc.edu or (757) 822.2133 Barbara Siller, Marymount University