Use of Classroom Voting in Liberal Arts College Classes (Small and Large)

Ron BuckmireOccidental CollegeLos Angeles, CA

ron@oxy.edu

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Outline Goals of this talk Large Classes

44 students, Difference Equations, Summer 2009 38 (and 31) students, Calculus 1 (Sec 1&2), Fall 2007

Small Classes 15 students, Differential Equations, Fall 2009 22 students, Linear Algebra, Spring 2008

Examples Conclusions Future Plans Sources and Resources

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Goals of this talk1. To communicate my experiences with use of

clickers in small and large classrooms at a (now-famous) liberal arts college

2. To provide preliminary results on an experiment on student learning in Differential Equations

3. To get ideas for other ways to measure effectiveness of clickers on learning outcomes in the future

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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“Large” Classes By “Large” I mean Classes Larger Than 24

Calculus 1, Fall 2007 (38 and 31 students) First Time Ever Using Clickers Used Clickers About Once Per Week (12 times) Formative and Summative Assessment

Difference Equations, Summer 2009 (44 students) Daily class meetings (4x week for 4 weeks) Used classroom voting Every Single Day All Entering First-Year Students

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Small Classes Linear Algebra, Spring 2008

22 students Used classroom voting on 24 of 36 class days Made mistake of making no content changes Limited classroom and student discussion Final Exam included a Multiple Choice section

drawn from Clicker questions Unsuccessful implementation

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Small Classes Differential Equations, Fall 2009

15 students Used clickers about once a week (16 times) Used exactly the same class materials from

Differential Equations, Fall 2008 (12 students) Extended student and classroom discussions Gave exact same final exam to Fall 2008 and Fall

2009 classes, average score went down (76.6 to 71.5)

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Final Exam Scores Differential Equations Fall 2008 versus 2009

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

50- 50+ 60+ 70+ 80+ 90+

20082009

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Example 1: Calculus 1 (Fall 2007)Class 11: Question 1

At some point in time, you were exactly three feet tall.

A. True B. False

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Example 2: Calculus 1 (Fall 2007)

Quiz 1 Was…

1. Too Easy

2. Easy

3. Hard

4. Too Hard

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Example 3: Calculus 1 (Fall 2007)

Student Responses To Exam 2 Self-Assessment

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

quiz

HW

WS

OH

Click

REV EX

REV LEC

PROF

2:30pm1:30pm

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Example 4: Linear Algebra (Spring 2008)Class 25: Question 5

1. TRUE. 2. FALSE.

There are multiple bases for R2 so there must be multiple orthogonal bases for R2. All you need to do is pick two vectors that are not scalar multiples of each other, are orthogonal and then normalize them to produce multiple orthonormal bases in R2. Here are some more

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Example 5: Difference Equations (Summer 2009)

A) Δ2an = 0 B) Δ2an = 2 C) Δ2an = 1 D) None of the above

Question 2: Given the sequence {1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, …} which of the following is TRUE?

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Example 6: Differential Equations (Fall 2009)

Euler’s Method for Systems of First Order ODEs1. I completely understand this topic and I am confident

about answering exam questions on it.

2. I understand this topic mostly BUT I am not very confident about answering exam questions on it.

3. I barely understand this topic and could only answer a basic question on it.

4. I don’t understand this topic at all and could not answer any question on it.

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Example 7: Differential Equations (Fall 2009)

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

Syste

ms E

ule

r's

Sp

ecia

l Syste

ms

Ge

om

etry o

f Syste

ms

Intro

to S

ystem

s

Inte

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ting

Fa

ctors

Ho

mo

ge

ne

ou

s De

s

Bifu

rcatio

ns

Ph

ase

Lin

es &

Eq

uil

E &

U th

eo

rem

1D

Eu

ler's M

eth

od

Slo

pe

Fie

lds

Se

pa

ratio

n o

f Va

rs

Intro

to O

DE

s

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Example 8: Differential Equations (Fall 2009)

October 28, 2009 Question 9

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Conclusions Classroom voting can be used in both large

and small classes and actually seems to be a bit easier to implement effectively in large classes

Classroom voting can also be a useful technique to provide feedback on the class itself

Hard to measure impact on learning outcomes

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Future Work Using clickers again in Differential Equations

Fall 2010 Hoping to teach the class in such a way that the

impact of using clickers on learning outcomes can be measured

Possibly apply clickers to First-Year Cultural Studies course (Gender, Race and Gay Rights in the Obama Era)

Ron Buckmire "MAA Session on Engaging Students with Classroom Voting" (Joint Meetings, 01/14/2010)

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Sources and Resources Project MathQUEST (Math Questions to Engage

Students) http://mathquest.carroll.edu/ Derrick Bruff’s Teaching With Classroom

Response Systems http://derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/

Cornell’s GoodQuestions Project http://www.math.cornell.edu/~GoodQuestions/index.html

Ron Buckmire’s Courses I Teach websitehttp://faculty.oxy.edu/ron/math/