14 - An Example of Multi-Purpose Use of Clickers in College Algebra

Summary

Introduction

College algebra is a course with a great many and well-documented teaching and learning problems, as well as a great variety of proposed solutions. (See for example [35, 38, 75] and their bibliographies.) In what is likely the most popular model for the course, students listen to the professor lecture and watch the recitation instructorwork exercises. Students, especially underclassmen, often poorly synthesize the information that they see and hear during class. The corresponding failure to transfer knowledge and concepts is not easy for students to recognize – and even when they do, there are often few viable activities available for them to bridge the gap. The bulk of the learning experience becomes memorization of a few techniques which are judged most likely to appear on the exam. My journey toward addressing some of these course issues has been strongly influenced by my involvement with the GoodQuestions for Calculus project [58]. The goals of the course design presented below are

• to increase student attendance and participation,

• to provide students and instructors with instantaneous feedback regarding students' basic skills,

• to address misconceptions by challenging intuition via conceptual questions,

• to improve reasoning, communications skills and classroom experience by including a peer-learning component to the conceptual questions,

• to provide external activities which both prepare students before the classroom experience and assist them with knowledge synthesis afterward.

To make explicit one final goal, it is crucial for the course design to intrude minimally on the instructor's current time and energy allotment for the course.