Classroom Response Systems Teaching Professors

I have eyes in the back of my head

Ok, so that phrase sounds pretty creepy out of context. But most people who have attended elementary school have probably heard this response from teachers at some point in their academic careers. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The teacher is busily scribbling on the chalkboard, back turned to the class, and the class clown is doing something (silently) but distracting to the class. Without missing a beat, the teacher whips around and BOOM. Timmy is busted.

As effective as this skill is at managing a class, there is a limit to the superhuman strengths of teachers. They aren’t psychics, but we often expect them to be, as if they should intuitively know when students are confused or don’t like a given lecture style.

Students will walk out of lecture, griping about how the professor was speaking at a rapid-fire pace, how one of the concepts made no sense, or how they are “totally lost.” Professors say, “Please, ask questions if you don’t understand” or, “My door is always open, and I’d love to see you in office hours.” But let’s be honest. Are students really going to approach a professor and say, “Your lecture style is awful. You talk way too fast, skip from concept-to-concept too quickly and don’t pause for questions in the middle.” Probably not. Furthermore, students are often so lost, they don’t know what specific questions to ask. A combination of apathy, general confusion and fear of hurting a professor’s feelings often prevent professors from hearing what students really think.

Granted, most schools do have ‘course evaluations’ at the end of each term, asking students general questions about a professor’s strengths and weaknesses. But by the end of the quarter, it’s too late. Students have taken the course, and what’s done is done. The best case scenario is that students will devote the time to write thoughtful and critical evaluations of the course and that the professors will use it to inform their next teaching experience. But by the end of the semester with finals approaching, what is the likelihood students are going to sit down and detail everything that they disliked about a course that is already over? Student feedback is immensely important, and in the current university system is a completely missed opportunity.

A recent article in the New York Times highlights innovative ways professors are culling feedback on a more regular basis from students. One biomedical engineering professor asks students to rate him anonymously on a biweekly basis and solicits feedback that way. He then takes it a step further and graphs the results to discuss in the next class period. Others use Patricia Cross’s ‘One Minute Paper’ approach, where they write down the most important thing they’ve learned for the day and also questions they still have. While examples like this are becoming more common, they are far from commonplace.

In addition to presenting lecture material, mentoring grad students, writing grant proposals, peer-reviewing articles and conducting their own research, it’s no surprise that most professors don’t take the time to collect regular feedback from students. Let alone graph the results.

What if professors could solicit feedback from students not only on a biweekly basis, but also multiple times throughout a lecture? And what if they could get those responses immediately so they could iterate in real-time? Well, it turns out they can. Mobile devices students already have with them in class have the ability to completely transform this process and facilitate a dialogue between professors and students. Whether it’s through multiple choice questions to see if they understand a given concept, using our ‘Feedback’ module, or simply by keeping a ‘Discussion’ open that crowdsources questions from students, it can actually make the lives of both professors and students easier. Classroom response systems can be as much of a learning tool for professors as they are for their students.