More Than Multiple Choice: A Toolbox for Incorporating Clickers Into Political Science Courses

Abstract

“Active learning” strategies—peer instruction, simulations, hands-on activities, and the like—improve student performance and engagement. However, instructors often struggle to incorporate these techniques into their courses. Doing so can be especially difficult in large lecture courses, where the number of students makes activities time-consuming and unwieldy. Student response systems (SRS, or “clickers”) provide useful tools for incorporating active learning techniques into political science courses regardless of size. While prior research has shown that clickers improve student engagement and mastery of course content, these tools remain underutilized in the political science classroom. Drawing on existing research, an original survey of faculty who use clickers, and our experience using clickers in multiple undergraduate courses, this article aims to provide a “toolbox” of clicker-based techniques and activities that political science faculty can use to align their courses with educational best practices. We offer suggestions for using clickers to implement these best practices, as well as to teach some of the specific concepts and skills that political science courses frequently cover. Finally, we describe some of the challenges that faculty face when they incorporate student response systems, and provide suggestions for addressing them.