Clicker Resources

The following resources will help you enhance your understanding and use of student response systems (aka "clickers"). While some of these resources are generic to all student response systems, others are specific to the i>clicker brand that Ball State University supports.

Technical Help for i>clicker

• i>clicker documentation 
• Videos
• Importing your class rosters from Web Gradebook /Blackboard 
• Moving grades from iGrader into Web Gradebook / Blackboard
• Print documents to accompany these videos
• Importing rosters and moving grades—Web Gradebook
• Importing rosters and moving grades—Blackboard  
• Password-protecting your i>clicker flash drive to secure student data (coming soon!)

Instructional Support Materials

• Sample syllabi statements and first-day-of-class issues (from i>clicker)
• First-day-of-class handouts for students (Web Gradebook / Blackboard) 
• Sample first-day-of-class PowerPoint presentation (revise as needed)
• Join the Ball State "Clickers in the Classroom" listserv to receive announcements and join the conversation among Ball State clicker users.
• Who's using clickers at Ball State?

Articles, Books, and Websites

Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments, by Derek Bruff. Jossey-Bass, 2009.

• This book is a thorough study of teaching with clickers, with significant attention paid to writing effective clicker questions, as well as how to use those questioning techniques to engage students in active learning. OEE has a few copies of this book we can loan to Ball State faculty members.

i>clicker User Community

• This page contains faculty case studies, best practices/tips, research, conference papers, and more. Some of the other resources below come from this site.

On the Use of Clickers at CU

• The purpose of this report is to summarize the main results from a study to evaluate faculty practices and student attitudes regarding clickers during the Spring 2007 semester at the University of Colorado at Boulder (commonly referred to as "CU").

Clicker videos from CUs Science Education Initiative

• A series of short videos about clicker use in both the science classroom and upper division courses, including information on question writing.

"Clickers in the Large Classroom: Current Research and Best Practice Tips," by Jane Caldwell. Life Sciences Education, Vol. 6, 2007.

• A nice summary of research on clickers as of 2007, accompanied by a best practices section drawn from that research.

"Designing Effective Questions for Classroom Response System Teaching," by Ian Beatty, et al. American Journal of Physics, January 2006.

• A detailed study of designing effective clicker questions for the physics classroom, with clear applications to other disciplines, especially other sciences.

Teaching with Classroom Response Systems

• Derek Bruff's blog on clickers—frequently updated and very thoughtful.

A collection of articles explaining clicker use in various disciplines

An excerpt from a video by Eric Mazur about clicker pedagogy