The Brown & White

Professors in the College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh began using an electronic clicker system in the fall of 2006 to track attendance and answer questions in class.

Turns out, clickers could also improve test scores, according to research at Ohio State University.

The study said students who use the TurningPoint clicker system during class lectures score 10 percent higher on their final exams- the equivalent of a full letter grade.

In classes where clickers are used, the handheld wireless devices are used to answer multiple choice questions presented on a large computer screen. Students can answer questions by pushing a button, and the answer and a bar graph showing the percentage of students who selected each choice are displayed on the screen.

Clickers have also proved to diminish the gender gap in classrooms, according to the study. It demonstrated that in clicker classes, male and female students performed equally well while in the traditional, non-clicker classes, male students outperformed female students.

The study attributes this advantage to the anonymity of the devices because students could keep their answers private.

Journalism professor Kathy Olson uses clickers in her Media, Ethics and Law class at Lehigh and said that the clickers have worked well.

"We use them to vote on ethical hypotheticals, which lets students see that they aren't the only people who feel the same way about the situation," Olson said. "That helps open up the discussion because students are more comfortable when they have support for their points of view."

The study suggests that approximately 20 percent of a class is devoted to clicker questions, and the other 80 percent to traditional lecture and discussion.

Clickers seem to reinforce attendance in classes as well. According to the study, participation over the years has been relatively constant at 90 percent, and grading clicker questions or offering extra credit can raise participation to 98 percent.

Brendan Hannon, '12, has used them for quizzes for Introduction to Business.

"I think they make taking a multiple choice quiz easy and are more efficient than using paper," Hannon said.

Clickers are relatively expensive, costing a minimum of 40 dollars at the Lehigh bookstore.

"The only downside is the expense for the students and the occasional technical difficulty," Olson said. "But those have been pretty rare."

Hannon also said that he has seen students experience difficulty with the clickers.

"One drawback is that people have to choose their answers quickly," Hannon said. "I also think that they're hard for some people to use."