Clicker failure result in 923 A’s. What a terrible position to be in as an instructor. Integrating a technology only to have it fail and then that failure is published on the internet which allows people like me to comment and Monday-Morning-Quarterback. Sometimes technology integration is a no win situation.
A few questions come to mind…
Why did it fail and is there something we can do about it to avoid it in the future?
Why – the Wired Campus article didn’t really say but more details were given in the campus news paper it would be interesting to know how the exam was delivered mostly because I can not picture this from my experience.
Should we have a contingency plan? – The easy answer is yes there should be a contingency plan, but is the story above only a story because it is technology. Do we have contingency plans for when paper tests fail? Probably not because we do not expect them to fail and the failure rates are so low that it is not worth the time or resources to implement a contingency plan.
Is clicker technology the right technology to deliver examinations?
The campus news paper mentioned that the information on the test results were posted in the course’s Blackboard site. I wonder why the exam was not given in Blackboard as most LMS have a fairly robust assessment tool.
At Allegheny we use a different clicker system in our classrooms but that is not to say this couldn’t happen. We don’t have faculty integrating clickers for testing or to assign points other than participation which tends to be a small percentage of the grade.
What are the other options to deal with this after the fact? (I do not imply that the instructor was wrong in giving everyone full credit I just wonder what are the options.)
