At San Diego State, clickers have become an essential tool for large lecture learning. In a class of 400 people, a teacher can engage with his or her students by getting feedback through the clicker questions. The way the clicker works is very simple: The teacher posts a question on the projector and the students click option A, B, C, D or E. The clickers make the large lecture environment a lot more exciting and work to encourage students to be more alert and participative.
However, a lot of professors at SDSU give out points for clicker questions and make it worth a percentage of the overall grade. This essentially makes class mandatory. If you need to skip class for any reason, then you don’t earn the points for that particular class period. Although most professors give out extra points throughout the semester to not penalize those individuals who were seldom absent, not all professors are that generous.
College isn’t the place for class to be mandatory. All students are adults and pay for their tuition, therefore they should be able to go class whenever they please and not lose points because of their absences.
Whenever students miss class they’re most likely going to lose points in the long run anyway, because they’re going to miss important information that will be on quizzes or exams. If students will already be missing out on vital information, why should they be penalized even more for not being in class? Many students, conversely, enjoy the fact that they get points for going to class because they don’t miss class anyway — unless in the case of an emergency or illness.
“I’ve only used clickers in my Com 103 class and they’re easy and convenient,” business marketing sophomore Katie Held said. “It made my class more interactive. However, in college, students want the option to come and go to class without consequence and don’t like to feel babied when they’re supposed to feel independent.”
The focus of clickers needs to be redirected as a way to interact and help communicate new information. Clickers are great to see how other students think and feel about the messages delivered by the professor. Students need to stop worrying about it as an attendance monitor. Many teachers are frustrated with the fact that students view clickers as the mere source for attendance points.
“I get very frustrated that the focus tends to be on the points and not the interaction, in the students point of view,” social media professor Rebecca Nee said. “I understand that. The points are only worth 5 percent of the grade, which is a small percentage of the grade. I don’t want the focus to be on the points I want it to be on the participation, which is why we are using it in the first place.”
Students need to start taking advantage of the interaction involved with clickers, instead of the points they get for participating. Students should want to engage and pay attention in large lectures, because either way it will ultimately benefit them the most.
