Projects

DIT Clicker Funding Award

Evaluation of proposals from DIT lecturers on how they would like to strategically integrate clickers into teaching during the 2011-12 academic year are completed. We are pleased to announce newcomers to the project and other lecturers who will continue to work with clickers in their teaching. 
 
Steve Meaney (Biochemistry), Valerie Hascoet  (French), Greg Byrne (Clinical Immunology), Mick Mc Keever  (Control and Automation Systems), Rosaleen McElvaney (Abnormal Psychology), Julie Dunne (Chemistry)
Alice Luby (Accounting), Patricia Ennis (Health and Safety training). A booklet containing reports and feedback from DIT lecturers on the use of clickers in the spring semester 2011 , please see Clicker_report_July_2011.  

Spring semester 2011 Clickers Projects were held by Brendan O’Beirn, Ziene Mottiar, Barry Ryan, Patricia Ennis , Colm Agnew, Eoin Mclean, Thomas Shannon, Blaithnead Sheridan , Deirdre Lawless, Rosaleen McElvaney and Alice Luby.
Read about previous recipients projects using clickers at DIT on the Clicker Blog http://ditclickers.wordpress.com/. See the post Clicker Technology – too techno for me! for tthe experience from a lecturer on their use in a lecture.

Classroom response systems or clickers offer a tool for engaging students in the classroom. These systems have been used in a variety of fields and at all levels of education. The teacher or lecturer poses a question to the students; the students use the clickers to transmit answers by pressing the clicker buttons. Benefits of clicker use are generally described to be:
•    Increased participation of students
•    Peer engagement of students
•    Interactive teaching
•    Enhancement of large group learning and teaching

 
What are clickers?

Clickers are hand-held personal response systems which enable lecturers to ask questions and gather students' responses during a lecture. Gathering responses from students during lectures has helped lecturers gauge the understanding of their students, giving them a chance to focus on areas the class is struggling with. Use of clickers can increase students' attention and interest and increase retention of information presented in lectures.
Clickers, have been purchased with HEA SIF 2 Funding for use in each college. These are available for loan from the College Libraries. Training is available through the LTTC (email lttc@dit.ie).

Using clickers in teaching

• Class Discussion - Facilitate discussion by polling students' opinions and discussing the reasons for their opinions
• Feedback - Collect immediate feedback about students' understanding of lecture topics so confusion can be addressed quickly.
• Peer Instruction - Allow students to share, discuss, and change their opinions before answering a question.
• Collect Data and Perform Formative Assessment - Collect data on course topics or learning preferences throughout the cycle of a course
• Summative assessment - collect student answers to quizzes and exams
• Take Attendance - Record attendance in large lecture courses.

Workshops

Following the success of workshops held in each faculty during 2009/10, more workshops will be provided in 2010/11. See http://lttc.dit.ie/lttc/workshops/ for more details.
Watch the video of a training workshop recorded in October 2009 at DIT.
Discipline based focus groups will be set-up in 2010/11 also to support clickers use in subject disciplines.

HEA SIF 2 Funding under the DRHEA Enhancement of Learning strand has been used to purchase six sets of personal voting systems available for use in each faculty. These are available for loan from the Faculty Libraries. Training is available through the LTTC.

Help resources:

Clickers Quick Start Guide