Kevin Stearns/University Photography

Caitlin Fitzgerald '06 answers a question Feb. 17 in lecturer Bert Fulbright's Physics 208 class by pressing a button on one of the 200 response boxes installed in Rockefeller B. Copyright © Cornell University

How many alcoholic drinks do you typically consume when out with your friends on a Saturday evening?

This may sound like a phone survey or a game show, but it's actually from a Cornell food science course taught by Professor Robert Gravani, whose 225 students quickly and anonymously respond using remote-control clickers.

The use of polling technology -- also known as personal response systems -- has a 35-year history at Cornell in helping professors with large-enrollment classes make that all-important connection with students.

"Students can't receive information at the rate a professor spews it out," said Raphael Littauer, professor emeritus of physics. "So it's worth coming up with a better way of communication."

In 1971, Littauer wired and installed his own electronic audience polling system for his Physics 214 class in Rockefeller Hall. A grant from Cornell's Center for Improvement of Undergraduate Education and some other contributions helped him cover the $40,000 price tag for a 200-seat commercial response system (and with the help of his then 12- and 14-year-old children, he installed it in the lecture hall during winter break).

The response boxes, with five buttons and one red light, were built at the Newman Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics. When Littauer posed a question to his students, the red light would turn on. After the student pressed one of the five buttons, the light would go out. Once a button was pressed, students couldn't change their minds, and their answers were anonymous.

Littauer used his polling system that spring, asking six to ten questions in every class. Although it took time to prepare the transparencies for his polling questions, he found the transparencies took the place of the detailed lecture notes he used to create.

"After you've experienced polling, you never want to go back," said Littauer, who used his polling system in every class he taught thereafter. Today, his original, hard-wired polling system is still used in Rockefeller B.

Fast-forward to the 1990s, when physics instructor Phil Krasicky used the first infrared system from H-ITT in Rockefeller 103. Infrared polling systems require a computer with a COM port, an infrared receiver plugged into that port, and clickers. A mobile version of the infrared H-ITT system is currently being used by instructors in the Department of Mathematics.

By 2004, radio frequency systems had been added to the mix. Their greater mobility and much larger reception ranges make radio frequency systems feasible for use in courses with hundreds of students. The systems require a computer with a USB port, a radio frequency receiver plugged into that port, and clickers, which can be 1,500 feet away. Each radio frequency receiver operates on an assigned radio frequency, so several receivers can be active within the same building.

Moreover, textbook publishers began pairing up with various personal response system vendors, bundling their clickers with textbooks and actively approaching Cornell faculty about using them. Many of those faculty members are participating in a pilot project on polling technology being sponsored by CIT.

Faculty from food science, biology, the College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Human Ecology are using radio frequency systems in five classes to evaluate polling's effectiveness as an instructional tool. The goals of the pilot include evaluating personal response system hardware and software, trying different instructional strategies, assessing the effects of polling on learning and identifying critical and desirable features for such systems. The results of the pilot project will be shared across the campus.

"This project will enable us to use clickers to stimulate student-instructor interaction in the class and to receive important feedback on the principles and concepts discussed in lectures and in the textbook readings. We hope that by using the clicker system we will promote active learning instead of passive learning in the classroom," said Gravani, a pilot participant. "So far, students seem to be enjoying the experience, and everyone is pleased with the ease of use and rapid response of the polling system."

Food Science Professor Dennis Miller, Ph.D. '78, team-teaches Food Science 150 with Gravani. Miller added: "We hope to gain a better appreciation of our students' opinions and perceptions related to food choices and issues. We also hope it will help make our large class more engaging for students and help us improve our teaching."

According to Tom Every, CIT's assistant director for classroom technologies, feedback from the pilot will help faculty and CIT identify critical and desirable features and guide selection of personal response systems in the future. For more information about the pilot project and how to incorporate polling into university classes, visit http://www.cit.cornell.edu/polling/.

Leslie Intemann is a technical communicator with Cornell Information Technologies (CIT).