Chemistry 101 Meets Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Along with laptops and cell phones, more than 4,000 University at Buffalo students this fall will be packing a piece of gear into their backpacks that may make them feel like they're on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

Slender, handheld devices, sold as "Audience Response Systems" (but everyone calls them "clickers") are making large-lecture-hall classes at UB less impersonal and more effective for students and professors alike.

The clickers, which students use to answer questions posed by a professor during a lecture, help give the instructor instant feedback on whether the class is comprehending the topic at hand and whether he or she should make appropriate adjustments. They make classes more interactive and, some professors are finding, improve student attendance.

"Students love them," notes Troy Wood, Ph.D., chemistry professor in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, who saw attendance in his chemistry class last semester jump by 30 percent once he starting using clickers.

"They said in their evaluations that they came to class more often because they knew we'd be using it," he said. "And students in other sections said they were upset that they weren't using it."

Wood says he was sold on using the clickers because he immediately saw the analogy with the TV game show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" where audience members use clickers if asked by players for assistance in answering questions.

"In the show, sometimes the audience is really sure, but sometimes it's evenly split," says Wood. "When my students are split in how they're answering my questions, then I have to step back and think about it. If fewer than half the students can answer the question correctly, then they're not getting it."

Wood's pilot project with the clickers was funded by UB's Educational Technology Center, part of the university's library system, which, along with UB's Instructional Technology Services of the Computing and Information Technology division, will make a recommendation on whether they should be used more widely on campus.

To date, clickers are being used at UB in introductory courses in the departments of chemistry, biological sciences, physics, political science and psychology that typically have a large number of students.

The clickers are packaged with the textbooks for a particular class and students are instructed to bring them to lectures. A wireless receiver installed in the classroom instantly records students' responses to multiple-choice questions posed by their instructor and provides a summary of results to the professor indicating how many students responded correctly or incorrectly. The sum of these responses also allows the instructor to determine how many students did not respond.

"Now I've got instant feedback," says Wood, "I know whether they're grasping the material or not, and it gives the students an opportunity to interact in the classroom because they can answer questions related to the material."

Wood says he wanted to use the clickers because he's always looking for ways to make the large lecture setting friendlier.

The data that the clickers help provide are particularly helpful when Wood prepares exams.

"I can go back and review what percentage of students got which concepts right," he says. "The data correlate with a given lesson. So if I can see that they've got a particular concept mastered, I won't ask a question about it on the exam. But if there's evidence that they were struggling with something, I'm going to ask a question just like it."

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