Worried that class sizes are getting to big and that students aren’t getting enough out of lectures, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is requiring students to pay $36 for a small, wireless handheld transmitter for giving feedback and answering questions:
To connect with students in vast auditoriums, professors sprinkle multiple-choice questions through their lectures. Students point and click their transmitters to answer, pushing blue buttons numbered 1 through 9 on their keypads. A bar graph appears on the professor’s laptop, showing the number of right and wrong answers; teachers can slow down or backtrack when there are too many wrong answers.
There is one major downside, at least for students. The transmitters are registered and assigned a number, so it’s possible to keep track of who is showing up and who is skipping class. As we dimly recall from our raucous university days, one of the few upsides to taking one of those huge lecture courses with 800 people in them is that you’re able to miss a class and remain unnoticed.
PS – Any UMass-Amherst students out there who can get us a picture of one of these things?
