Introduction

Clickers (known also as Personal Response Systems or PRS) are an emerging technology that allows real-time interactions between the instructor and their students. The interactions are usually in the nature of queries by the instructor with students responding electronically to those queries. The student responses are digitally collected both as a group and individually and the information (data) reflects the individuals’ and/or group’s consensus to the queries. These data can be immediately displayed as visual feedback, not only to the instructor but also to the queried audience. Information obtained in this way can be manipulated pedagogically and administratively via statistical analysis of the queried data to support programmatic goals of a course, a department or a campus wide initiative.

In actual use on this campus this technology has been shown to:

• Increase attendance (sometimes dramatically)
• Coax participation from normally non-participative students
• Create a more engaging lecture environment

Computing and Communications has partnered with several academic departments to pilot the use of this technology. After three successful pilot programs, C&C has now equipped all UCR General Assignment classrooms with the hardware and software necessary to utilize this technology.