Thoughts about resistance to technology

Submitted by Bola C King on Sep 10, 2009, 06:57 PM

I don't know how many of you have had direct experience using "clickers" - also known as classroom response systems, polling systems, audience response systems, etc. If you're not familiar with them, think of the "ask the audience" lifeline on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? used in a lecture on campus. It's a system designed to make the lecture setting into a more engaging and interactive environment for both students and instructors.

I bring it up because our English department is about to begin using them in a 200-student lecture, and I'm part of the team that's making that a reality. We had a demo for faculty and graduate students yesterday, and it was well-received in general. But there are a couple of types of resistance we met, and that's really what I'm thinking about at the moment.