Teaching musical acoustics with clickers

Abstract

Musical acoustics is a well-proved avenue for teaching scientific concepts to students whose fields of study and interests are far removed from any science. In recent years the Michigan State course in musical acoustics has benefited greatly from using clickers. Frequent clicker questions (1 point for any answer; 2 points for the correct answer) promote attendance and help maintain a lively, interactive classroom environment, even for a large lecture class. Nobody sleeps when clicker points are on the line. Students are encouraged to discuss responses to clicker questions among themselves before answering, and the response protocol allows students to change their responses at any time before the polling is closed. Musical acoustics lectures include many demonstrations that can be presented as experiments requiring students to predict the result in advance using their clickers. “No-count” or “all-good” clicker questions can be used to determine student responses to perceptual experiments, and the feedback from the scoring algorithm gives the answer and the inevitable variability. Most important, responses to clicker questions give an instructor instant feedback about whether new lecture material has been understood. To use clickers in this way requires flexible instruction and spontaneous generation of new clicker questions.