Types of clicker questions

Clicker questions can serve many purposes – below are some common uses:

1. Quiz on the reading assigned in preparation for the class
2. Test recall of lecture point
3. Do a calculation or choose next step in a complex calculation
4. Survey students to determine background or opinions
5. Elicit/reveal pre-existing thinking
6. Test conceptual understanding
7. Apply ideas in new context/explore implications
8. Predict results of lecture demo, experiment, or simulation, video, etc.
9. Draw on knowledge from everyday life
10. Relate different representations (graphical, mathematical, …)

While each mode can be useful in the right circumstances, those emphasized above are the uses that we have seen the largest direct impact on learning and the uses that students report they find of most value. Not surprisingly, these reflect the deepest mastery of a subject and hence have been shown to be the most challenging for students to learn. We recommend that the majority of questions fall into these emphasized categories.