You may already have some element of interactivity in your lectures, if so, consider using the voting system in place of a show of hands or coloured cards. If not, these simple tips will help you use the system effectively in increase student engagement in your lectures.

Adapted from Karen Howie's 'clickers - do's and don'ts'

University of Edinburgh

Planning

It is recommended that there shouldn’t be more than 3 questions in a 50 minute slot.

For this format, questions that work well:

• Provide a spread of answers from students
  cover a common misconception (and hence the largest percentage of students get it wrong on the first attempt)
• have a ‘don’t know’ option if you don’t want students to guess

Question types that do not work well:

• questions where there isn’t a correct answer (trick!)
• questions with multiple correct answers but the student can only choose one.

Try to take advantage of the break using the system gives in lectures, say two questions at 20 and 40 minutes into the lecture. Try not to leave questions to the end – the students will be likely to pack up and leaving during a voting question.

Peer instruction is a good way to promote discussion on a topic. Get students to vote on the answer to a question, then without re-explaining the concept ask them to discuss the answer with their neighbour – each trying to explain why they voted for a particular answer. After a few minutes, ask students to revote and see the shift in the votes. This works particularly well on a question where there is typically a spread on student responses.

Be aware that each question takes time and allows you to cover less lecture material. This material can either be relocated (ie. put on the web, added as a project, referred to as a reading exercise, etc) or cut out of the course.  At the University of Edinburgh, this was used as a method to increase student engagement with material outside the lecture hall. Specific topics can be listed with directions to more material on Blackboard, or elsewhere for students to review before the next lecture. Follow this up with a question form the material at the start of the next lecture.

Sources of good questions

• Use textbooks for online sources of questions which you can adapt
  Try a variety of simple questions and use the feedback you get to improve their use for next year.
• Give the students a piece of paper, along with their lecture notes (if provided) on the way in. Ask a short answer question near the end of the lecturer, ask the students to write their answer down on paper and hand it in. After the lecture you can review the paper answers and design the best distracters for the question, which you can either use in the next lecture or in next year’s lectures.
• Look at the exam answers to pick out misconceptions in your lecture area for the following year