I’ve been a proponent of using interactive feedback technology in lectures (which means I can ask questions in my lecture, students can answer using a remote control with 10 or so buttons on it and we can all see how well we’re doing) for some time. As such I’ve been occasionally pulled out to demonstrate the tech and to get other people using it.
I’ve written a couple of brief things about how we’ve been using this in embryology lectures in the School of Medicine and the Higher Education Academy’s magazine “01” has included an article in this quarter’s copy.
The students like it and the lecturers like it. Everybody likes to use the clickers (instant gameshow) and teachers get to see immediately how much the audience is getting from the lecture. It’s simple to use and as more people have used it more Schools have bought their own sets. I imagine that in modules with very large student numbers if you can afford enough clickers you’ll learn a lot about your audience. Is it possible to interact with every individual in a lecture with 300 students in an hour in any other way?
For more information:
– see the HEA 01 article here (HTML) or here (pdf)
– visit Turning Technologies to find out more about the tech
