The Use of Clicker Technology to Evaluate Short and Long-Term Concept Retention

Electronic student response systems ("clickers") offer instructors an alternative way to quickly query a student population's grasp of lesson material.We examined the use of clickers with 3 rd -year undergraduates to determine if the anonymity provided by the clickers influenced student responses and to investigate clicker effectiveness on long-term concept retention.These objectives were accomplished in an introductory environmental science course using multiple-choice questions focused on key concepts at the end of 12 selected lectures.Three class sections (n = 48) answered the questions with clickers, while three sections (n = 48) answered by hand raising.Long-term concept retention was evaluated by linking exam question performance to these questions.We hypothesized that the anonymity offered by the clickers allowed each student to respond without feeling indirect pressure from peers to select a specific answer.Approximately 74.0% of the clicker population and 86.9% of the hand-raising population answered correctly.This illustrated that a lack of anonymity can greatly skew results by allowing a few intelligent students to sway the majority and give the instructor a false impression of class comprehension.Three sections (n = 55) exposed to no review questions acted as the control group.Results from two course examinations show that 79.9% of the hand raising population, 74.9% of the clicker population, and 75.3% of the control population answered correctly on these paired questions.A single-factor (population) analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that the students did not perform significantly better on the selected exam questions regardless of population type (F 2, 48 = 0.6165; F critical = 3.191; P = 0.5441).Our study showed that, despite their lack of effectiveness on long term retention, clickers are a valuable asset for short term concept evaluation.They provide immediate accurate feedback of student comprehension that enables the instructor to modify lesson material accordingly.