Clicker+Test+Reflection

Administering a test to my students using a student response system, or “clickers”, was an experiment on my part. Several of the readings for my classes suggested that it would increase student motivation, but techniques that work with one group of students do not always work with another. I found that the digital test was just as motivating for my students, as it was reported for other groups. My Instructional Technologist was kind enough to enter the test questions for me.

The layout of the questions for the test was surprisingly simple; each question is put on a different slide of the presentation. This allows the answers to be recorded and a grade to be averaged. My unfamiliarity with the format resulted in me having to return to the tables containing the answers, and hand grade them because of the matching questions. I had the students complete those pages incorrectly, so I had to correct my mistake. The Technology placed all the questions and answers on a slide, but set the questions up on multiple pages so that each one answered on a different page. I had students answer all the questions on a single page, so they did not receive credit for each question but as an all-or-nothing group. Without such teacher errors, grading would take much less time than hand grading paper tests, or even scantrons.

Test taking with the student response system requires more time than traditional pencil and paper tests, this is both an advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is that students want to discuss the questions once the correct answer has been shown. This offers a way to reinforce content and gives another opportunity to correct misconceptions. One of the major disadvantages is the loss of instructional time. There is so much material in the curriculum that teachers are naturally concerned with loosing this time. The second disadvantage is compiling the two halves of the students’ grades from a multiple day test. The final big disadvantage is that students that perform poorly on the exam have a more difficult time correcting their mistakes because there is no paper copy. The teacher must therefore come up with a different way for them to earn that credit back.