LEARNING THEORIES

Going back to the learning experience I had while struggling to come up with a decent answer to a math problem, would it have worked better if my teacher had used clickers? Would they have alleviated the humiliation that I felt in front of my peers?

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Here is a very insightful NPR podcast on the topic of clickers that a friend of mine has recently suggested to me: When Everything Clicks: The Power of Judgment-Free Learning.

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Karen Pryor and Martin Levy both explain how they have been using clickers as “baggage-free” methods of learning. When she started training dolphins at the Sea Life Park in Hawaii, Pryor was one of the pioneers to consciously integrate operant conditioning. She had little experience in the field and at first was reluctant to embark on such a task but a technical manual on B.F. Skinner’s theory changed her mind. She realised the full potential of using clickers to teach new skills.

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Dr. Martin Levy is an orthopaedic surgeon at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He has been a fervent advocate of clickers in education. I particularly like Levy’s comment on what he calls “the curse of expertise”: through years of research, experts often forget how hard it is to learn something new at the beginning and can no longer relate to what the students experience. It can often lead to frustration and discouragement on both sides. The instructor feels powerless and ineffectual at transmitting knowledge and at the same time, the student is all too conscious of his or her own failings as a learner.

 

Although inherently behaviourist in nature, clickers (as well as badges) are ways to reward the student’s efforts without the traditional notions of praise and criticism too often associated with the teacher, not with the learning process. I will quote Dr. Douglas Duncan in a short video made by the University of Colorado Boulder about the use of clickers in class:

 

 

“ […] learning takes place in your mind, not in mine. I can prepare all these wonderful lectures and you can listen to them and you can convince yourself [that you] understand it but maybe you can’t. […] if you can’t take what we’ve discussed and turn it into plain English and explain it to the person next to you, then you don’t really understand it. […] If I stop the lecture [a few] times each class and I toss you a question which is conceptually challenging and if I make you explain to your neighbour […] which you think the answer is, your learning is going to increase.”

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I think that Duncan’s explanation perfectly illustrates the ambivalence of clickers. Even though such basic response systems are often associated with close-ended, relatively simple questions, used wisely and creatively, they can help students grasp Higher Order Thinking Skills such as analysis, comparison and problem-solving.

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