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Comment by skizm | Hacker News Reader

Small point about the title: just because B is more effective than A doesn't mean A is ineffective.

Also, I didn't read the original source, but I wonder how difficult it is to get a class to be active participants in a lecture. I know plenty of people, if given a clicker to answer questions in class, would either not do it, or just click randomly (if it was required).

I think it is pretty obvious that getting students to actively participate is the ideal, but I feel like a lot of teachers and/or professors have given up on this strategy because it is more work on their part. If students don't want to learn (a good amount of) teachers probably don't want to put forth the effort to force them to.

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The problem is also that students have different pacing. Some will sit bored and waste time waiting while others will need more time or missed something and need to revise whole notes once again before they get it.

That is I guess why problem solving and active exercises were usually done in smaller groups (at least in our school). It is easier to manage in that setup.

About "it's more work on their part": when I lowered drastically the number of my slides, and started to put emphasis on facilitating the creation by my students of their own knowledge I had the guilty feeling of not spending enough time preparing the class. Preparing a lecture can be many hours of works. (Of course some lecturers will reuse ad nauseam the same slides and content for years. Not even thinkable in my field :-)

I don't know a single faculty member who has positive things to say about clickers, even those who were optimistic.

I'm a lecturer and I think clickers are great, for large classes especially. Clicker questions and small group discussion about the answers gets students thinking rather than just sitting there with eyes glazing over. It works well. By giving a small amount of real credit to the answers you even get all the slackers discussing the topic and arguing about which answer is right.

Technologically clickers are impressively easy to use as well, you just need to put in slides with questions into the main presentation. The biggest disadvantage is students who forget to bring their clicker or have endless excuses about why they couldn't be in class on a certain day.

They seem unfair to me :). I learned most afterwards when I was sitting in room alone and really learning. I was present at lectures wrote notes and all that, but found it hard/uncomfortable to absorb it immediately or form an opinion. I prefer to have time to think about material before being questioned on it.

My grades were good, so I do not think it is the issue of me being incapable of college level of learning.

I also usually managed to get enough participation points or answers or whatever was necessary for the grade, but rarely felt that the whole thing added something to my learning. It felt more like waste of time, especially those parts when people asked or had comments only to show they are participating.

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