Alternatives to Physical Clickers in the Classroom

Click­ers are a great tool to help you engage your stu­dents, receive instant feed­back from your stu­dents about under­stand­ing con­cepts you are teach­ing, and to get an over­all feel for your stu­dent audi­ence. The one hur­dle that is attached to the phys­i­cal Clicker tech­nol­ogy is all the bulky hard­ware. Click­ers involve set­ting a  receiver, set­ting the code for the phys­i­cal instruc­tor clicker with the soft­ware, and mak­ing sure each stu­dent has a work­able phys­i­cal Clicker. What hap­pens when a Clicker breaks in the mid­dle of a pre­sen­ta­tion? What hap­pens if the bat­ter­ies run out right before the lec­ture? These are ques­tions and issues that are faced when fac­ulty use the phys­i­cal Clicker tech­nol­ogy to teach. How can you get all the ben­e­fits of teach­ing with phys­i­cal Click­ers but use some­thing more soft­ware based? Why not use tech­nol­ogy that the stu­dents already own (like lap­tops or cell phones)? We decided to eval­u­ate alter­na­tives to phys­i­cal Clickers.

The one solu­tion we found was using Google Docs Forms. Instruc­tors can send the stu­dents a link to the form they cre­ated in Google Forms. The instruc­tor will need a Google account to cre­ate this form. Stu­dents can use their lap­tops to access the form (with no need to cre­ate an account or log into a site). As the stu­dents sub­mit their answers, the instruc­tor can view their responses in a chart visu­al­iza­tion, cre­ated by Google Docs. One would need to keep refresh­ing the win­dow with the chart dis­play to show updates as responses come in from the stu­dent audi­ence. Also, the responses are tracked in a spread­sheet inside Google Docs. If you know JSON, you can pos­si­bly set the chart visu­al­iza­tion to auto­mat­i­cally refresh as responses come in from the audi­ence. What’s also great about Google Docs is that if stu­dents would like to do the same thing dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing their class, as long as they have a free Google account, they can set up their own form and gather response feed­back from the stu­dent audi­ence too. Google Docs Forms is good for syn­chro­nous and asyn­chro­nous audi­ence response and polling. The learn­ing curve is low for this tool, which made it one of our top rec­om­men­da­tions for an alter­na­tive to phys­i­cal Clickers.

Another tool we eval­u­ated was Piazza. Piazza is more than just an audi­ence response tool, it’s basi­cally a CMS (Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tem). Instruc­tors and stu­dents need to cre­ate accounts with Piazza to use the web based inter­face. Stu­dents can use their lap­tops or mobile devices (iPhone or Android app) to access their class and answer the ques­tions being asked by the instruc­tor. Instruc­tors can also track course sta­tis­tics in Piazza. The learn­ing curve is much higher for this tool than for Google Docs Forms. Piazza is FERPA com­pli­ant (since stu­dent infor­ma­tion is being stored on a server not on your cam­pus). Piazza is good for syn­chro­nous and asyn­chro­nous audi­ence response and polling.

Pin­nion is a great tool if an instruc­tor is look­ing for a syn­chro­nous audi­ence response tool. It is free (instruc­tors will need to sign up for an account). Instruc­tors can ana­lyze data com­ing in from the stu­dent audi­ence using free Pin­nion tools. A Pin­nion user can ask as many ques­tions as they want, there isn’t a limit to how many ques­tions and answers a ses­sion can have in Pin­nion. The dis­play in a mobile device and lap­top is clean (a free mobile app for Pin­nion avail­able). Results can be viewed in real time and results can be exported as an Excel/CSV file. If an instruc­tor uses Word­Press, Pin­nion has devel­oped a Word­Press plug-in to use Pin­nion and Pin­nion ques­tions can also be dis­trib­uted by email, Face­book, Twit­ter, and embed­ded into the instructor’s web­site. This tool does not work for asyn­chro­nous polling because the instruc­tor has to release each ques­tion to the stu­dent audi­ence (basi­cally acti­vate and close each response ses­sion with their stu­dents). The learn­ing curve was slightly higher than Google Doc Forms, but lower than Piazza.

The last tool we would like to rec­om­mend is Poll­Daddy. Poll­Daddy is a sim­ple inter­face that works well in a browser and on a mobile device (includ­ing iPhone and iPad). PollDaddy’s main func­tion is the con­duct polling. It’s a great tool for syn­chro­nous and asyn­chro­nous polling, and Poll­Daddy keeps basic reports of the responses an instruc­tor receives from their polls. The free account (which you would need to sign up for to get the ben­e­fits of basic reports) allows only 200 sur­vey responses a month. There are other plans where an instruc­tor can receive more responses per a month, so it’s up to the instruc­tion how often they want to use this tool and how many stu­dents they have in their class. The stu­dents answer­ing the instructor’s poll do not need an account. The instruc­tor can set close dates for polls. The learn­ing curve for Poll­Daddy is low and easy to use.

Here’s a com­plete list of soft­ware we sur­veyed (in case one of these options fits in with your style of teaching):

Poll­Daddy: http://polldaddy.com
Socra­tive: http://www.socrative.com/
Piazza: https://piazza.com/
Lec­ture­Tools: http://www.lecturetools.com/
Ques­tion­Press: http://www.questionpress.com/
Learn­ing Cat­alyt­ics: https://learningcatalytics.com/
pollev­ery­where: http://www.polleverywhere.com/highered-student-response-system
men­time­ter: http://mentimeter.com/
Celly: http://cel.ly/
eClick­ers: http://www.eclicker.com/
Turn­ingTech­nolo­gies Respon­se­Ware: http://www.turningtechnologies.com/studentresponsesystems/mobiledistancelearning/higheredresponseware/
Socra­tive: http://socrative.com/#
Google Forms: docs.google.com
Top Hat Mon­o­cle: http://www.tophatmonocle.com/
GoSoap­Box: http://gosoapbox.com/tour
iClicker Web Clicker:  http://www.iclicker.com/products/webclicker/
Click­er­School Vir­tual Clicker by Eduware: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clickerschool-virtual-clicker/id444020820?mt=8
Soda­Head Polls-WP plug-in:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sodahead-polls/
Pin­nion: http://www.pinnion.com/