The majority of my team applications are designed as multiple choice
questions so I use PollEverywhere (which uses cell phones instead of
handheld clickers but it's the same idea) to get student responses to those
questions before the teams start working. Doing this accomplishes a couple
of goals. The main thing is that I think it's useful for getting students
to think about the application problem on their own, even if just a little
bit, before they start discussing it with their team. Because they have
committed to a response, I think the team discussions are somewhat more
lively (though I really have no hard evidence that it makes a difference).
I also get a record of student presence - generally, the peer evaluations
take care of that but I did once have a student who thought his peer
evaluation score was unfairly low and it helped that I could go back and
see exactly how many clicker questions he was missing (in that case, the
student did attend class but tended to either arrive late or leave early
and I could see that because he had responses for some questions in a class
period and not others).

Jennifer


On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 6:20 AM, Spaulding, Kristina N <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  Hello all,
>
>
>  I'm wondering if anyone has used clickers in TBL classes and what
> creative ways you've used them.  I used to use clickers and loved them (as
> did my students), but when I started TBL it was too much for me to juggle
> at once.  Now that I'm more comfortable with TBL, I'm bringing clickers
> back.  During each lecture, I put up sample test question at the beginning
> of the lecture and again at the end (same questions).  I try to write them
> so most students can't answer them at the beginning, but can at the end.
>  This will be the first year I'm doing this using clickers, and it will
> give me a good idea of where the students are at before and after each
> lecture.  I also plan on using them to take anonymous polls now and then.
>  However, this isn't really TBL specific.  I'm hesitant to use them as a
> reporting method because then teams can see answers, but now which team is
> giving which answer.  Any other ideas?  Have people had success using them
> as part of the RATs?
>
>
>       _________________________________________
>
> Kristina N. Spaulding
>
> Doctoral candidate
>
> Gallup lab
>
> Department of Psychology
>
> University at Albany
>
> HU B68-E
>
> 442-4786
>
> OH: Tue 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
>
> Fri 1:00 - 2:30
>
>
>
>