iClicker

iClicker

Dr. Bruce Alberts (science god, author of The Cell, ex-prez of the National Academy of Sciences, and UCSF faculty member) gave us a series of lecture on cancer biology this week. He was a fairly good speaker, and he introduced a new teaching device called the iClicker. It's a battery-powered remote control that allows people in the lecture to press ABCDE multiple choice answers and interact with the lecturer's pre-made multiple choice questions.

I think Harvard had a version of this in some science classes, but I've never used it before. At first, I viewed the iClicker as a tool of oppression... I felt like it was cheesy and coercive and not very instructive since multiple choice questions are generally reductionistic. However, I give kudos to Dr. Alberts for trying a new teaching tool and some of his questions were pretty interesting and challenging.