Youngstown company’s product clicks on campus take higher education by storm

Staff/wire report

PHILADELPHIA

Freshman Sarah Speicher stared at her syllabus in the bookstore at Temple University, considering her next purchase. “Clicker?” she asked out loud. “What’s a clicker?”

A clicker, she soon discovered, is a “personal response device,” a small electronic gadget the size of a slim calculator that she and her 399 classmates in Law and American Society would be toting to class.

The trendy and high-tech Youngstown-produced learning tool is used to take attendance, poll student opinion, and administer quizzes. It’s taking a strong hold on campuses across the country, with an estimated 2 million college students now using them.

“I think they’re the greatest educational innovation since chalk,” said Neil Sheflin, an economics professor at Rutgers University.

Turning Technologies, based in downtown Youngstown, is a world leader in the manufacture of clickers. It develops interactive response systems for the K-12, higher-education, and professional markets.

The clickers have been responsible for the company’s meteoric growth. From 2004 to 2008, Turning Technologies experienced sales growth of 983 percent and employee growth of 742 percent.

It is consistently ranked among the fastest growing companies in the region, state and nation.

The use of clickers, which can cost $35 to $45 apiece, is shifting education away from the age-old practice of putting a professor at the front of a room to lecture to a passive audience. Instead, it forces participation from all students and encourages peer learning. It is, as one pair of professors titled a journal article, like “waking the dead.”

Michelle Benton, a junior at Gwynedd-Mercy College, said the format has let her know if she understood the material. “And you get to see where you stand in comparison to your classmates.”

On a recent Tuesday morning, the first day Speicher would use her clicker, she filed into a large lecture hall at Temple and found a desk in the amphitheater. A “Seinfeld” rerun played on the cinema-size screen as students settled in.

At 8:10, “Seinfeld” faded out, and law professor Samuel D. Hodge Jr. popped the first question onto the big screen: “What year in school are you in?”

There were five multiple-choice options.

The students started clicking, while a small counter at the top of the screen scrolled the number of responses and a stopwatch measured the time. Within seconds, the transmitter in Hodge’s computer — which collected the signals by radio frequency— spit out the results. They flashed on the screen: 66 percent were freshmen.

Students had registered their clickers online, so each click could be traced back to them. The clickers would count for about 7 percent of the final grade — reflecting participation in class polls and grades on clicker quizzes.

Then Hodge launched into the difference between common law, determined by judges, and statutory law, made by a government body.

A cartoon version of Eagles coach Andy Reid appeared on the screen, talking about whether fans who lost their season tickets should be given new ones, or have to pay for them. If there was no law on the books; it would be up to the judge.

Hodge told the students about a real case involving a Jets fan who sued after he lost his tickets and the team refused to replace them for free.

A clicker question popped up. Was the law on the fan’s side?

“Who should win?” asked Hodge. “The fan or the team?”

The students started clicking. The counter scrolled the number of responses, and then a bar chart displayed the results: 75 percent of the students voted for the Jets.

“That shocked me,” Hodge said later. “Usually, the students are consumer-oriented, but they did it on a business basis. They looked at the law. It was great.”

Hodge started using clickers more than five years ago in hopes of captivating the elusive attention of the college student.

“They’re used to getting visual stimulation,” said Hodge. “Not only do they want to be educated, they want to be entertained.”

With a mix of video clips, amusing advertisements, animated figures, and clicker questions, he tries to continually assault their senses.

The clickers allow both Hodge and his students to gauge comprehension and gather opinions. Throughout class, Hodge marches up and down the aisles, calling on students and repeating their comments into his mike.

“It’s like a game show,” he said.

Sheflin, at Rutgers, says that by forcing participation from a sometimes somnambulant audience, clickers offer “proof of life.”

“Clickers allow me to teach in pseudo-Socratic dialogue,” he said. “I ask them something, and they are pushed to respond.”