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Using i>clicker at UO -- notes for instructors

Are you interested in using personal response systems (clickers) in a course you'll be teaching next term? Here are some of the things to do to get started. This is a brief summary for faculty members. See the i>clicker user's manual for more information.

Background

First, a bit of orientation. The UO  currently recommends that faculty who want to use clickers adopt "i>clicker", a product originally developed at the University of Illinois and now available commercially. We expect that individual students will buy their own clickers ("remotes"), typically from the Duck Store. The UO provides instructors with base stations ("receivers"), plus training and technical support. The i>clicker system is very easy to use, inexpensive, and integrates well with other UO systems such as Blackboard.  In its first term at UO, fall 2008, it was used by more than 4100 students.

Getting Started

Once you've decided to use clickers you'll need to do several things:

Order clickers for your students to purchase

We treat clickers just like textbooks. You'll want to place an order at the bookstore a month or more before the start of the term so your students can buy the clickers. The Duck Store (UO Bookstore) is well organized to handle i>clicker orders. At last check they sell the clickers for $34 new or $26 used, and will buy them back from students for $17. Students can use the same clicker in multiple courses.

Tell your students your plans

You'll also want to make sure that your syllabus has appropriate instructions for the students to buy their own i>clicker remotes. And you'll need to make plans for registering the students' clickers (see below) -- typically through a Blackboard-based registration assignment.

Check out an "instructor kit"

You'll need an "instructor kit" to take to class when you use clickers. You can check this out for a term loan from the CMET (formerly Media Services; located on the ground floor of Knight Library) front desk. You'll get a base station (receiver), two clickers (remotes), plus software on a flash drive. You'll need to plug the base station into your laptop computer in class.

We check out instructor kits as term loans to faculty who are planning to use clickers the coming term.

Note: instructor kits contain a copy of the software (for both PC and Mac) on a USB flash drive, but may not have the most recent i>clicker software. Copy the software to your PC/Mac hard disk and run the provided Web_Update program. We recommend as of November 2009 that all UO instructors use i>Clicker version 5.4.2 (PC) or 5.4.1 (Mac).

Get training on using the hardware and software

It's really easy -- one of the reasons we've standardized on i>clicker is that it's a simpler and more robust system than many of the competitors.

We have a small amount of local documentation:

There's a lot of material available on line at http://www.iclicker.com. Some of the material there includes:

In addition, our on-campus support consists of

  • CMET (aka Media Services), who check out the instructor hardware, and can provide assistance with it and other classroom technologies.
  • CMET Consulting, who can provide assistance using the software, especially Blackboard integration. Visit Knight 19, or call 6-1942. In addition to one on one tutoring, we can schedule a workshop on demand if there is a group of faculty interested in using i>clicker.
  • Teaching Effectiveness Program, who are the people to turn to for advice on how to use clickers most effectively in teaching.  TEP has several handouts on clickers:
  • the Knight Library Computer Help Desk, Duck Store (UO Bookstore), and the IS Help Desk, all of whom can provide limited (but we think adequate) support for students.
  • the community of other faculty adopters. Our estimate for fall 2009 is that i>clickers will be used by about 20 courses, and by about 3500 students.
  • a mailing list for interested faculty and staff.  Subscribe by sending email to majordomo@lists.uoregon.edu with a message containing:
    subscribe clickers

Using clickers to ask questions in class

This is the easy part. Plug your base station into your Mac or PC in the classroom. Run the iClicker software, which puts up a floating window on your screen. Click "start session" to convert that big window into a small floating toolbar.  Put up a powerpoint slide that asks the students a multiple-choice question. On the iClicker toolbar click "Start". After you've given the students time to respond, click "Stop". Now click "Display" to have i>clicker show a graph of your students' responses.

When your students answer questions, the i>Clicker software keeps track of the clicker numbers and corresponding answers.

Almost everyone uses i>clickers for graded exercises (credit for class participation, or perhaps attendance or low-stakes in-class quizzes). To do so, you'll need to load the iClicker software with a class roster and register your students' clicker numbers in it. Once you've registered your student's clicker numbers the software can then interpret the clicker numbers and match them up with students.

Using Blackboard and registering your students

i>clicker records student responses by clicker number, but to be useful the software needs to be able to map those clicker numbers to people, which means you need to "register" your students and their clickers.  There are several ways to register students (roll call registration, manual assignment, etc.), but the easiest is to use Blackboard registration.

Using Blackboard registration, you (a) download a class roster from blackboard to your i>Grader software, (b) add a form to your coursesite where the students can record their clicker numbers, then (c) after the students have registered, you can then download the registration information to your iclicker software.

See Blackboard and i>clicker at UO for more information.

(a) Using the i>Clicker application, make sure your iclicker preferences are set to Blackboard {Ver 8.0 and above} and that the security code is set correctly for web registration.  Download a copy of your Blackboard class roster: Go to Grade Center and click "Work Offline->Download". Download User Information Only, use Delimiter type:Comma, and include hidden information. You'll get a file with a long name such as gc_200901.12345_fullgc_2009-09-14-14-27-45.csv. Move it to your appropriate courses subfolder in your i>clicker software folder and rename it to gb_export.csv.

(b) If you are using UO web registration, request that an appropriate entry be added to your blackboard site, then give your students the assignment of registering their clickers using it.  Students who register a clicker for one course do not need to do so for other courses.

(c)  After you've used i>Clicker at least once in class, use the "Synchronize Web Registration" in i>Grader to download the registration information.

If instead of web registration you are using roll call registration, then start an i>clicker session during a class early in the term. On the pulldown menu, choose "loan/register clickers" and click "Roll Call". 

Download a new roster and do another roll call after the end of DROP/ADD.

You can also register clickers for individual students in your course using the i>clicker program.  Click "loan/register clickers".

Now proceed to use clickers. Every few days you may want to upload clicker grades back into Blackboard so your students can see how they are doing.

Maintained by: JQ Johnson, jqj@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 11/20/2009