Clicker Participation

Instructors at all levels of education often end lessons with this question. While instructors believe that they are giving their students a chance to speak up, there is little evidence to suggest that the invitation is effective (Bloom, 1984). Today more than ever, students need some level of involvement and participation in class to help them reach their learning potential (Thalheimer, 2003). Productive classroom participation and healthy discussions can ultimately lead to higher student achievement (Yourstone, Kraye, & Albaum, 2008).

Student participation does not just mean listening to an instructor talk about a subject. Participation should come from a student being active in the classroom. When a student is given the opportunity to interact with the teacher, the potential for meaningful learning and

A technology that is currently used in classrooms is the Classroom Response Systems® (CRS), informally known as “clickers”. Clickers are hand-held devices that allow students to quickly and even anonymously answer questions that have been posed by instructors during class. While clicker systems can be purchased from companies such as Turning Technology, IRespond, and eInstruction, students can also use their cell phones as a clicker to accomplish some of the same tasks. Teachers can access sites like Poll Everywhere and Socrative to survey their students in similar ways that response systems do. Since the inception of clicker technology several studies have been conducted on the general value they add to the classroom , but few controlled studies have been conducted at the high school level that compare student achievement and classroom participation. The research proposed here will provide much needed evidence on the effectiveness of clickers to promote classroom participation and enhance achievement at different levels of