Four sections of introductory psychology participated in a test of personal response systems (commonly called "clickers"). Two sections used clickers to answer multiple-choicePersonal hand-held responders, commonly called "clickers," are one of the latest trends in technology for teaching (Beatty, 2004;Duncan, 2005). Clickers are one potential tool for increasing interactive engagement with material, and courses that use interactive engagement show higher levels of concept learning (Hake, 1998). The instructor poses a question to the class (using Microsoft PowerPoint) and students respond with hand-held responders. After students have responded to the question, the instructor displays a histogram of the class's responses. Anecdotal evidence (based on faculty interest at teaching conferences) indicates a rising use of clickers on college campuses, but do clickers help students learn? Do they help students feel more engaged?According to some researchers, students like clickers, and students also believe clickers make them feel more engaged. For example, on course evaluations, students at one university reported that clickers had more benefits than downsides (Draper & Brown, 2004). However, in most studies on clickers, researchers do not compare clicker groups to nonclicker comparison groups, so demand characteristics might explain the findings. When asked, "how useful do you think the handsets are?" (Draper & Brown, 2004) or if "clickers helped me learn" (Duncan, 2005), students might overestimate their perceptions of benefits of clickers, because such introspection is notoriously faulty (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).In this study, we compared four large sections of introductory psychology (two instructors taught two sections each). For each of the two instructors, one section used clickers and one section did not. The instructors used the clickers to administer multiple-choice questions on the reading; to display histograms of the question results; and, when relevant, to correct widespread misunderstandings. The primary dependent measures were exam scores (within each instructor, exams in the two sections contained identical items) and self-reports of interest and engagement collected via anonymous course evaluations at the end of the semester.
Method
Participants and DesignParticipants were introductory psychology students (N = 1,290) at the University of Delaware enrolled in one of four large sections. Each section had approximately 320 students.At our university, introductory psychology attracts mostly first-year students (80%), but upper class students also enroll. First-year students are, in essence, randomly assigned to introductory psychology sections. During summer orientation sessions, entering students make a list of courses they wish to take in the fall without regard to class time or professor. Then a computer
