To click or not to click

Technorati Tags: ODCE

Session regarding plagiarism and using clickers in the library to raise students' awareness about plagiarism. I've never thought about using clickers as part of library bibliographic instruction.

Reasons for plagiarism:

• laziness


• Lack of understanding of how to cite and how to quote


• personal attitudes (it's not important; it's a silly requirement, unreasonable, irrelevant)


• others get away with it (especially Jayson Blair and other unethical journalist


• I would also like to add cultural issues. We need to teaach international students the standards and definition of cheating in the US educational system. Views of what we call plagiarism are very different in some Asian and Arab countries.

Cheating is like speeding: everybody does it, and it's no big deal if you get caught. That's an interesting view, and one that could reform our instruction and how we deal wlth plagiarism.

This session says that clickers have been in education since the early 1970's. I'd like to find out more abou that; I thought they were a very new phenomenon. I wonder if this was the Dennis type, in which students raise cards to indicate their chioce on a question. That way they don't see what each other has said, but Dennis knows at a glance which ones are doing OK and which ones are still confused.

He is using the CPS clickers (eInstruction) while we use the Turning Point system. I'm interested in seeing the differences. These are certainly bigger. It's more the size of my stereo remote, while the Turing Point is the size of a couple of credit cards. I've heard about the eInstruction system. If I recall correctly, it's more used in K12 settings.

It looks like it is not quite as integrated with PowerPoint as TurningPoint is. I'm not sure if this i s a plus or minus. Probably both.

This is being used in an anonymous fashion, which I think is a plus as well, especially for this topic. The signal from the clicker seems to be sent rather quickly as well. I like that they show who has answered. I'll have to double-check TP to see if we can do that too.

Do you think Clicker technology could be used effectively in one-time library instruction?
Results from the Audience: 25 yes, 1 Maybe, 0 no.

Presenters: Mike Tosko and Frank Bowe, University of Akron