Teaching with Classroom Response Systems
I wrote this back in 2009 when I saw the wide variety of uses of classroom response systems across the disciplines. I cringe a little at the writing, but the examples from my faculty colleagues hold up very well. In the book, I share polling strategies and example polling questions from almost fifty different instructors.
Student perspective questions can be used to help instructors get to know their students. Each class of students is unique, and it is often important for instructors not to rely on assumptions about students, their opinions, and their experiences. Asking these questions can provide useful information about students that helps prevent instructors from making unfounded assumptions about them and helps instructors tailor learning experiences to the unique makeup of students engaged in those learning experiences.
For example, Philippa Levine uses opinion questions to learn about the students in her course, The Evolution Debates, at the University of Southern California. Given the topic of the course, she sometimes finds it surprisingly easy to say something that seems harmless to her but off-putting to some of her students. By knowing where her students stand on sensitive topics, she is better able to avoid this.