The evidence (see previous post) suggests is the use of Audience Response Systems will be growing in popularity in lectures as a formative learning technology. Give this trend the question of designing in good practice for this technology in face to face teaching becomes more important. The following is a list of ideas, and thoughts fom Emma Cliffe and Nitin Parmar – both at the University of Bath – concerning how to ensure the activities are inclusive.

  • Read the question out aloud
  • Give students enough time to read the question, process, decide and vote
  • Allow students to work on their own, even if it’s a paired/group activity
  • Tell the students at the outset that their responses to questions are completely anonymous
  • Show students how the clickers work
    • Put an image of the clicker in your PowerPoint slides and highlight key areas of the clicker – The e-Learning team could provide this as a default slide
    • Let them know about the ‘green light’
    • Put a couple of ‘test’ questions/votes, just to make sure that the students are using the clickers correctly
  • Have an option on the slides marked ‘I don’t know’ and/or ‘Abstain’ to give students possibility to opt out
  • Provide students with a choice so if they do not wish to take part in voting (for a particular question, or the exercise), it’s ok.
  • If possible, provide a hard copy of the questions… so that students can read these in front of them, instead of having to read from the projected image
  • If possible, upload question slides onto Moodle before or during the lecture so that students can download them onto their laptop and… change colours, increase size of text etc.
  • Let students know at the start of a lecture course that some sessions will use clickers (explaining what this would involve) to give students who might need assistance in using the clicker/accessing the slides time to put this in place – either by approaching you or Learning Support.

They’ll be working these ideas up into a more formal set of recommendations / guidelines over the next few months.