More Than Multiple Choice: A Toolbox for Incorporating Clickers Into Political Science Courses

Abstract

“Active learning” strategies—peer instruction, simulations, hands-on activities, and the like—improve student performance and engagement. However, instructors often struggle to incorporate these techniques into their courses. Doing so can be especially difficult in large lecture courses, where the number of students makes activities time-consuming and unwieldy. Student response systems (SRS, or “clickers”) provide useful tools for incorporating active learning techniques into political science courses regardless of size. While prior research has shown that clickers improve student engagement and mastery of course content, these tools remain underutilized in the political science classroom. Drawing on existing research, an original survey of faculty who use clickers, and our experience using clickers in multiple undergraduate courses, this article aims to provide a “toolbox” of clicker-based techniques and activities that political science faculty can use to align their courses with educational best practices. We offer suggestions for using clickers to implement these best practices, as well as to teach some of the specific concepts and skills that political science courses frequently cover. Finally, we describe some of the challenges that faculty face when they incorporate student response systems, and provide suggestions for addressing them.

Keywords:

• Clickers
• student response systems (SRS)
• active learning

Notes

1 Interview with a professor of political science, Campbellsville University, May 4, 2018.

2 Anonymous responses to faculty survey, June 2017.

3 Anonymous response to faculty survey, June 8, 2017.

4 Interview with a professor of biology, Villanova University, June 14, 2017.

5 Interview with a professor of business, Villanova University, June 21, 2017.

6 Interview with a professor of political science, Valparaiso University, May 11, 2018.

7 Interview with a professor of mathematics, Middlesex Community College, May 9, 2018.

8 For a detailed overview of the different positions in this debate, see Bruff (2009), Chapter 4.

9 Interview with a professor of political science, Auburn University, May 7, 2018.

10 Interview with a professor of mathematics, Middlesex Community College, May 9, 2018.

11 Anonymous response to faculty survey, July 1, 2017.

12 A video of Vasquez’s class using clickers to learn about the prisoner’s dilemma is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = DWrjc5IEvc8. Supporting materials are here: https://community.macmillan.com/docs/DOC-1242.

13 Wertheim (2011) proposes a similar activity for teaching the “tragedy of the commons,” in which public benefits decrease with each individual who chooses to defect. Although Wertheim’s activity is intended for a business class on negotiation, it could be repurposed for a political science course.

14 Leave more time for messaging (but no more than 5 minutes, to prevent students from losing focus) in a large class, or if you use a student response system that enables students to “upvote” each others’ messages.

15 Full activity materials and lecture slides are available on request.

16 TurningPoint offers a “priority ranking” question format that allows students to rank choices in order of preferences, for instance.

17 Velasco and Çavdar (2013) propose a similar activity for using clickers to teach students about electoral rules.

18 This should be done with caution, however; one of our interviewees noted that the heatmap function in TopHat led to complaints from students. Interview with a professor of political science, Auburn University, May 7, 2018.

19 While BYOD programs are cheaper than stand-alone clickers, faculty also expressed concerns about the cost of BYOD systems. As one faculty member noted, “I probably will not use TopHat again . . . in addition to the other required materials for the class, it felt like too high a cost” (Faculty clicker use survey, May–July 2017). One free alternative is Socrative, but this is limited to relatively small classes (fewer than 50 students) and does not allow faculty to collect individual student-level data.

20 Interview with a professor of political science, Auburn University, May 7, 2018.

21 Interview with a professor of public policy, University of Maryland, August 17, 2017.

22 Response to faculty survey, June 2017.

23 In particular, we recommend that faculty initially collect student-level information on all nonsensitive questions, and use student response system software to mark answers as correct or incorrect, without penalizing students for incorrect answers. Faculty can thus familiarize themselves with the hardware and software while keeping student anxiety low.

24 We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this point.

25 Responses to faculty survey, May–July 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sara A. Newland

Sara A. Newland is assistant professor of government at Smith College.

Bridget Black

Bridget Black earned an MA in political science from Villanova University.