(Biological Sciences 61) The use of clickers, particularly in large introductory courses, is becoming increasingly promising as a means of stimulating class discussions and encouraging participation by all students. This project is developing and testing the efficacy of a novel pedagogic alternative, Class Generated Community Clicker Cases (CGCCC), to lecturing in a large introductory biology course. A minimum of 1540 students, in 14 sections, are being involved in development and evaluation of this technique that has been successfully pilot tested by the Principle Investigator.
Before the start day for class discussion of a topic, students are given a one-page faculty generated questionnaire relevant to it. The students are told to use the questionnaire to interview a real person and write down the verbal answers as they hear them, in the tone of the interviewee. During the next class period, students use clickers to report interview responses. The class results are displayed in histograms immediately after the question is asked. Students then read about the topic in their textbook and, in the next class period, utilizing the clickers, they take a quiz to determine their knowledge of the topic covered and their understanding of the concepts within it. The course is constructed so that interview data analysis days alternate with days devoted to discussion and explanation of chapter content and concepts. Ultimately students are challenged to reveal what misconceptions their interviewee had about the topic and, in the penultimate assignment about a specific topic, they return to their interviewee and discuss with them one of the interview questions and share one aspect of the course content. The students then hand-in a brief statement on how the interviewee responded to their discussion.
The effectiveness of CGCCC versus lecturing will be assessed using four indicators, two assessing student knowledge of biology, and two assessing students opinion of the course: students' factual knowledge; students' ability to assimilate and apply the learned information; rates of student attendance in the class; and self-reported student satisfaction with the course.
Intellectual merit: The intellectual merit stems from: the improvement of a core curriculum course; the production of an entire syllabus that can be used by or serve as a model for other institutions and, the potential for the data generated by these studies to address faculty concerns about the use of non-lecture alternative methods for teaching large introductory science classes.
Broader impacts: The broader impacts stem from: the training and mentorship of graduate students to be educators as well as scientists; the regional workshops for faculty from a variety of academic settings; and the journal publications and conference presentations being produced.
