Re:Works Great! (Score 2, Insightful)

The point is not for you, the student, to have an idea of what your fellow classmates think. Rather, the point is for me, the professor, to have an idea of how well the students have understood what I am presenting.

The "show of hands" approach doesn't work; the students quickly figure out who the smart kids in the class are, and wait to copy thier answers. Writing things down on paper doesn't work either, because it takes too long.

Also, if you can easily understand everything your professor is telling you, you aren't the student she needs to worry about. You would probably be able to learn the subject matter on your own, with or without a professor. Most of the time, the ones who really need the extra explanation are either very well aware of the fact (in which case, they are unlikely to ask questions during lecture for fear of looking stupid), or are so totally out to sea that they don't even realize they don't understand what is going on. In the former case, the clicker gives the students a chance to let the professor know, in a nonthreatening way, that they don't understand what is going on. In the latter case, the students can see (whithout a strong negative impact on their grade) that they don't understand what's going on.

There have also been a lot of comments about how hackable these systems are. If you know enough to be able to hack one of these, more power to you. Again, you're not the student I'm trying to reach. You will do fine in my class, with or without my help.

To those of you who have only negative things to say about these systems, what would make them better? The idea of immediate, automated assessment is really attractive to me as an educator.