It can be hard to hold the attention of an auditorium full of easily distracted college students, especially when they have laptops, cell phones and iPods nearby.
That's why professors are turning to clickers, hand-held devices that let students answer yes or no on multiple-choice questions with quick clicks, then see the results displayed on screens in front of the classes.
"Nearly everyone's attention span is pretty short," said Julius Bianchi, associate provost for information services at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. "This is all about keeping their attention. They're thinking about what they did before class and what they're going to do after class. It's an age-old challenge but a new way to get through to the students."
Clickers allow professors to pose a few questions and quickly figure out if students are getting a tough concept. They can give pop quizzes and provide instant grades. They can ask sensitive questions, which students can respond to anonymously.
Students say they enjoy the novelty of the clickers.
"It definitely helps with the interaction," said Michael Lee, 19, a student at Ventura College. "It gets the whole class into the lecture."
CLU recently bought 400 clickers, along with the computer programming that allows professors and students to use them.
The company that sold the clickers, Turning Technologies, had 100 percent growth over the past year, said Katherine Kahn, educational communications manager.
Kahn attributes the growth to people's desire to participate rather than passively listen, whether they're at lectures, conferences or meetings, all places where clickers are used.
"People want to interact," Kahn said. "They're used to their cell phones, to being engaged."
Colleges, especially, are using the clickers, Kahn said. At some schools, professors give them to students at the start of classes. At others, students are required to buy clickers, costing $30 to $45 each.
In either case, professors can, if they want to, link the clickers' serial numbers to students' names, which allows them to track their answers in class.
Bob Rumer, who teaches physics at CLU, starts most of his classes with two or three multiple-choice questions, giving students the option of choosing "I don't know."
That way, he can tell if his students have done the assigned reading. If they get the basic concepts covered there, he can move on to more complex concepts and problems.
"It takes five minutes, and we know where we stand," Rumer said.
Clickers are also useful when a professor needs to ask sensitive questions, because they can be set up so students' answers are anonymous, said Virgil Adams, an associate professor of psychology at CSU Channel Islands.
In a human sexuality class, for example, a professor could ask about sexual activity, or if anyone had been sexually assaulted. "People respond, and then you build a whole discussion around that," Adams said.
Beyond that, clickers can engage shy students who might be reluctant to jump into class discussions.
"Some students will never raise their hand," said Raeann Koerner, a health and physical education instructor at Ventura College. "Some of those students who never say a word will be the first to click their answer."
Professors say they need to use the clickers wisely. They should, for example, ask questions that require higher-level thinking and not forget about classroom discussion.
They also need to be careful about cheating, for example, a student using more than one clicker to answer questions for a classmate. They also don't want to use clickers so much that students burn out on them as they have with PowerPoint discussions.
"You have to use a lot of different approaches," Koerner said. "If you don't, the students will turn off. It can be, Oh, clickers again.' So I don't use clickers every day."
Still, clickers can be a helpful tool when the average attention span of a college student is seven minutes, said Gail Uellendahl, a professor in the School of Education at CLU.
"These students are used to gadgets; they're used to technology," Uellendahl said. "Sometimes they get bored if they can't fiddle."
Josh Hahn, 18, a student at Ventura College, agreed. "That's why I like it, because it's a button."
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