Clickers popular, maybe not effective-- by Patricia Bow

Alerted by a stir of confusion, the professor turns from his whiteboard. A hundred student faces gaze back at him, many of them blank. "Hands up if you had trouble understanding that," he says. The students look sideways at each other. Nobody wants to be the first to admit they didn't get it.

Most lecturers face this situation sooner or later, especially when teaching large classes. A new technology called group response systems (GRS) promises help by providing immediate electronic responses from each student to questions posed in class by the instructor. GRS suppliers claim that "clicker" technology increases student participation, improves retention of the material, and increases the overall pass rate.

But not all these claims are backed up by objective research, UW accounting professors Carla Carnaghan and Alan Webb said at a Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (LT3) seminar on June 28 in the Davis Centre. Their study, "The Impact of Group Response Systems ('Clickers') on Student Learning and Satisfaction," is the only one they know of that examines the effect of GRS, when used with an interactive style of teaching, on objective measures of student engagement and learning such as class participation and exam grades. Their study was funded by a Learning Initiative Fund grant.

How GRS technology works: Students use keypads ("clickers") -- handheld infrared or radio frequency devices that look like TV remotes (left) -- to send electronic signals to the lecturer's computer by way of a receiver in the same room. The technology can be used to record attendance and individual student participation, and give multiple-choice or true/false tests. Newer versions also allow students to provide numeric answers to questions. The students' responses can be displayed as graphs to show both class and instructor what proportion of the class understands the material.

GRS manufacturers say clickers are now being used in some 500 North American colleges and universities and are so popular that some publishers are packaging them with new textbooks to boost sales. But do they really help students learn? To find out, Carnaghan and Webb carried out a study in three second-year accounting classes they taught during 2004. Students were divided into groups, with about half of the students using the clickers to answer questions in class during the first part of the course, and the other half using them during the last part of the course. An important aspect of the research design is that all students answered the same set of questions, whether or not they had the clickers.

Results? Clearly, the students enjoyed using the clickers, but the researchers found little evidence to support suppliers' claims. Although the students themselves reported that using the clickers made them feel more comfortable about participating in class, in fact those with clickers actually participated orally less than those without. GRS use had a modest positive effect on learning outcomes as measured by exam scores.

Even so, the technology does have some value, according to the researchers. "We felt we were more interactive, and it took out the guesswork on whether the students understood the material," Carnaghan said. Webb said the feedback from students using the clickers will help him to clarify parts of the course material students find most difficult. Both professors say they will continue to use the clickers in their classes.

Students call for energy saving

UW student leaders "are taking the initiative to reduce power usage around campus", the Federation of Students announced a few days ago as the smog sat thick over southern Ontario and energy consumption broke records.

"Students call on our respective faculties and administration to take energy conservation and usage reductions as seriously as the societies do," said Raymond Lai, president of the Mathematics Society. The Feds announced that "For the remainder of the term, and for consideration for subsequent academic terms, the student societies will be doing their part to reduce the energy it consumes within society and clubs offices."

The Arts Student Union, for example, will keep the lights off during the daytime in its Arts Lecture Hall office and rely on the skylighting, according to ASU president Stephanie Woodburn. Said the Feds: "Societies are also considering long-term conservation initiatives that include the purchase of energy efficient appliances to replace those that are not efficient."

Said a news release: "The Federation of Students and the student societies urge the administration of the University, and particularly Plant Operations, to join in promoting a more responsible usage of energy throughout campus. Initiatives such as instructing staff to turn off non-essential office equipment and lights after-hours and adjusting the ambient temperature upwards by one degree within buildings would be beneficial to the school and the community while posing no impact on daily operations or services."

Individual students were asked to do their part to reduce energy consumption at home by turning off computers and other electronics while they are at school. According to Bianca Sayan of the UW Sustainability Project, students can save "up to approximately 480,000 kilowatt hours (which amounts to a savings of up to $9,000)" annually by shutting off idle computers at home at night and while they are at school.

Last week the Mathematics Society launched a "Math Conserves" campaign, which will call on math students shut off their home computers while they are at school -- "which coincidentally is during provincial peak consumption hours", MathSoc president Raymond Lai notes.

Reliable energy supply has been in question in recent days, the Feds said in their news release, pointing to a ten-minute blackout on the south half of the main campus June 27. (Officials say it wasn't related to a supply problem.) "We don't want brownouts to become a part of our lifestyle," said Lawrence Lam, VP (internal) of the Federation. "If we all do our part, UW can maintain its legacy as one of the most green-minded campuses in the country." He cited some of the energy-saving innovations that UW students have led already, such as the solar panel roof on top of Federation Hall.

The university boasts that through various projects, including things as simple as reducing the number of tubes in overhead lights, it has cut its energy consumption per square foot of indoor space by 42 per cent -- a reduction of almost half -- in the past three decades.

Shakespeare scholars talk faith--from the UW media relations office

The notion of a Catholic Shakespeare, which has drawn much attention partly because of Stephen Greenblatt's best-selling biography Will in the World, received little support at an international conference held recently at UW.

It was the 17th Waterloo Conference on Elizabethan Theatre -- one of UW's oldest continuing events, dating back to 1968 -- and brought together 75 professors of English from around the world to examine the role of religion in the theatre of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

UW English professor Kenneth Graham, who helped organize the mid-June event, says there was plenty to talk about: "Elizabethan theatre reflects the diverse religious tapestry of post-Reformation England, rich in both the new pieties of Protestantism and the transformed Catholicism of Counter-Reformation Europe, and not without connection to Judaism and Islam." Among the topics explored in special sessions were marriage, martyrdom, the Protestant ministry, resurrections true and false, Catholic spirituality and prayer -- all as they appeared on the stage.

One group of papers looked farther afield. Abdulla al-Dabbagh, from the University of United Arab Emirates, investigated Shakespeare's affinities with Islamic Sufi thought. York University's Jaspreet Gill looked at English envy of the powerful Ottoman Empire.

And Marianne Novy, from the University of Pittsburgh, considered the forced conversion of Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice" -- still a play that can spark public controversy -- in relation to other such conversions, dramatic and historical.

Graham says the conference's sharpest disagreement came between two west-coast scholars with different views on how seriously the theatre in Shakespeare's time took religious issues. Jeffrey Knapp, author of Shakespeare's Tribe and a faculty member of the University of California at Berkeley, argued that the Shakespearean stage participated in a historical process of religious pluralization. In response, Anthony Dawson of the University of British Columbia, a former president of the Shakespeare Association of America, argued that the professional theatre of Shakespeare's day was a secular institution that appropriated religious language for its own aesthetic purposes.

The conference was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, along with contributions from UW's English department, the arts faculty and St. Jerome's University. Graham, who organized the conference with Philip Collington of Niagara University, said the two organizers are editing a volume of essays drawn from the conference.

C&PA