Note: This column will use a response card ("clicker") to solicit reader responses to critical-thinking questions. Those without one will not receive full points for reading this column.
It's safe to say professors want their students to find lectures insightful and, most of all, worth attending. If I were teaching a large class, the only way to assess this would be to compare grades with attendance.
I'd treat my lectures as episodes of a TV show. For the show to have an audience, it must offer something the audience wants. If few showed up to my class, I'd deem my lectures ineffective and work on improving them.
Q: Why on Earth would any professor ever require a clicker?
A: 1) Because they would never trust student opinions about lecture quality. 2) Because UF already bought and installed all the technology. 3) Obviously wrong answer with big words to trick C-students. 4) To solicit student responses to critical thinking questions. 5) As if a communications junior at UF would know.
Time's up. Moving on.
Taking away a student's right to leave - or to never show up to - a lecture prevents him or her from giving feedback about its quality.
The funny thing is that professors claim these infernal contraptions actually increase feedback from students. From an INR2001 syllabus: "Lectures will use response cards (‘clickers') ... to solicit student responses to critical thinking questions." If this truly were the case, why not use Sakai? Other than requiring a student be in the classroom, clickers are no different.
These questions about clickers first crossed my mind when I took INR2001 this past fall. During a lecture on dictators, my professor left one clicker question until the end of class, stating he wanted to punish anyone who leaves, like the two boys he caught last lecture.
To be fair, clickers do offer professors of large classes a method to assess where a class stands in its understanding of certain topics. Though if my professor doesn't care about the data needed to improve his lectures, then he shouldn't care if students attend his lecture.
Q: Why require a twenty-some-odd-dollar remote when Sakai can do the same thing?
A: 1) Because it requires less effort for the professor. 2) Because the professor enjoys fostering student misery. 3) It'll definitely be 3 this time, bro. 4) Because UF strongly encourages it. 5) Because the clickers are really meant to take attendance.
Time's up. (And yes, back row and aisle-sitters, I'm saving one question till the end.)
Even with all this evidence staring them in the face, both UF administration and professors allow clickers, leaving only students with the means to end this peculiar institution.
Just stop buying clickers. Think about it:
Q: How can a professor punish a class of clicker-less students?
A: 1) Giving them all bad grades. 2) Making clicker points extra credit. 3) It's got to be 3 this time, dude. 4) Sending a long, angry email threatening consequences. 5) Whoa...
Time's up. Crazy, right?
Unlike the Syrian government, our professors cannot shoot at us until we stop making trouble. Docking grades looks bad because grades are a representation of student mastery, not a means of exercising power. In the face of mass collective action, professors will have no option other than to fold.
The moral here: Protest what you don't like in the classroom. Nail 95 theses to professors' doors. Dump their tea into Lake Alice.
Until students demand that professors redress the poop out of these grievances, our suffering will continue.
Chip Skambis is an English and telecommunication junior at UF. His column appears on Mondays.
