insufficient
Q prep time
clash w/
teaching style
“Inventing good Qs is          !”
“I'm busy.”
+
hard
Qs are the starting point for my class. Good Qs help, but what matters most is the conversations that the students and I have around them.
vs.
questions as program
questions as raw material
experiment, learn by doing, & have fun
discuss the Q (not just what it's about)
ask "Why were you asked this Q?"
ad-lib alternatives, or ask students to do so
start with a hard Q, then peel it apart in class
vs.
“Clicker Q discussions take too long!”
“I have a lot of material to cover.”
+
Qs are my “curriculum” for teaching with clickers, and I need well-engineered Qs to be effective.
vs.


class for presenting content
class for digesting content
vs.
vs.
Qs as checking one thing
vs.
Qs as contexts for exploring inter-related things
Teach students how to think about the material, and they can learn a lot on their own.
Have a clear way of indicating what students are responsible for.
Provide self-assessment tools.
Have a system for students to encounter content before it's discussed in class.
Think of Q sets as bookends: first to motivate, later to tie together.
Use Qs that ask students to compare, contrast, relate, extend the context, strategize, etc.
Prepare a list of "talking points" for each Q, to help you weave in mulitple ideas during discussion.
“They're not interested.”
“They're afraid to speak freely.”
or
Clickers facilitate the sharing and critiquing of answers,
to find out what students know or can do.
Clickers facilitate the sharing and exploration of thinking,
so we can see new connections and perspectives.
vs.
clickers as exploration tool
vs.
clickers as assessment tool
Depend heavily on Qs with multiple interpretations and multiple defensible answers.
Invite opinion, preference, and judgment.
Learning science is like learning a language: it requires practice to speak (and think) it correctly. 
(Whose thoughts are in the spotlight: yours, or theirs?)
insufficient
class time
behavior problems
technical difficulties
incompatible
w/subject
Humans learn best by coming to terms with an initially bewildering array of interconnected ideas and contexts.
vs.
Good teaching means carefully segmenting, sequencing, and pacing content to be easily digestible by students.
learning as orienting and connecting
vs.
learning as following a path
If you go slowly enough to leave almost nobody behind, you'll lose the better students to boredom.
Pose challenging, complex, messy Qs wth many aspects that can be pondered.
Metacommunicate with students so that they know they're expected to struggle.
Favor real-world and applied situations over artificially constrained "typical" problems.
“It upsets me or the students when we have technical problems.”
+
the subject as “the way an expert thinks and functions”
Class must go smoothly, or teaching is disrupted and students lose confidence.
vs.
Technology is a tool we use to communicate among ourselves; if it fails, we'll make do.
class as a staged event
vs.
class as a collaborative working session
I can use class time to focus on core ideas and big-picture understanding, and charge students with filling in the details outside class.

I must explicitly address in class everything students will be held accountable for.
Taking a long time on one clicker Q means spending a lot of time on one topic.
One clicker Q and associated discussion can address and weave together many ideas, skills, and relationships.
poor
participation
“This technology has serious bugs and limitations.”
“I can't figure out how to write good Qs for this material.”
I must teach a specific set of facts and skills.
vs.
I can help students learn how to think about this subject, how to use it for real, and how to learn more in the future.
Talk to students! Find out how they think about the subject; you'll be horrified, and want to help them change.
Focus on concrete capacities: What do you really want students to be able to DO (not just “understand”) when they walk out of the classroom?
Think of the subject as a toolkit, and focus on when to use which tools and how to choose the tools for an unfamiliar problem.
Look up research on student learning difficulties: they're often surprising.
It only flusters them if it flusters you.
Students should be disappointed, but not threatened, if the technology fails.
Once students have become accultured to the interactive classroom, you can get away with low-tech substitutes surprisingly well (for a while).
“Clickers give students opportunities to be misanthropic.”
or
“Clicker use leads to lots of backchatter, often off-topic.”
Students should be paying attention to whoever has the floor.
vs.
On-topic backchatter is essential to good discussion, and some off-topic backchatter is inevitable and harmless.
Some students will act disruptively if given the opportunity.
vs.
Misbehavior is rarely a problem when students don't perceive the teacher as coercive or antagonistic.
vs.
teacher/student relationship as carrot + stick
teacher as ally for students pursing their own goals
Be permissive about backchatter.
If necessary, modulate it sympathetically, with meta-level communication.
Control off-topic backchatter by reducing boredom, not by insisting on compliance.
Don't take it personally.
Avoid using points or grades to control behavior.
Keep class fun and humorous; enjoy the students.
Make a deal with students.
Metacommunicate, metacommunicate, metacommunicate.
“Teaching this way takes skills and habits I don't have.”
+
“Students learn more when I teach according to my strengths.”
vs.
teaching as performance
teaching as improvising with an ever-growing toolkit
vs.
Students can learn effectively (maybe even better) while I experiment and learn by doing.
I need to be in control and on top of things to run class effectively.
the subject
as a list of
things to know
vs.
Hake study: even mediocre “interactive engagement” produces more learning than the best “traditional” teaching.
Metacommunicate about trying new things and experimenting, and ask students for their opinions.
Solicit and reflect upon student feedback. (It's good for them, too!)
The less bored you are, the less bored the students will be.
Go into the classroom as much to LEARN as to TEACH. — Bill Gerace
key factors in teachers’ success or failure adopting clicker pedagogy
Ian D. Beatty
Research findings on…
What I’ve learned while trying to produce…
…while practicing what I preach.*
clickers
teachers
TEFA
+
+
= lots and lots of data
the context
common
clicker
difficulties
Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment
Beatty, I. D. & Gerace, W. J. (2009). “Technology-Enhanced formative assessment: A research-based pedagogy for teaching science with classroom response technology.” Journal of Science Education and Technology, 18(2), 146-162.
40/35/23 + 5
eInstruction PRS-RF
professional development
+
NSF TPC-0456124
Univ. of North Carolina at Greensboro
Physics Education Research Group
with:
– Bill Gerace
– Bill Leonard
– Alan Feldman
http://bit.ly/beatty-aapt-2010