McCormick’s Use of Clickers in Classrooms Profiled in New York Times

It’s a problem in nearly every classroom: students spending class time checking their email on their phones or laptops. Now, some undergraduate students must use similar technology to prove that they are actually paying attention.

In Bill White’s Organizational Behavior class, each student has a “clicker” that is used to take attendance, take quizzes, and answer questions posed by White, a professor of industrial engineering and management science.

“They should walk in with them in their hands, on time, ready to go,” he said in a New York Times article about the clickers.

White is one of three dozen professors across the University who use the technology. Says the article:

“But the greatest impact of such devices — which more than a half-million students are using this fall on several thousand college campuses — may be cultural: they have altered, perhaps irrevocably, the nap schedules of anyone who might have hoped to catch a few winks in the back row, and made it harder for them to respond to text messages, e-mail and other distractions.”

Read the complete article here. Wisconsin Public Radio and NBC Chicago have also reported on this story.