Do clickers enhance student performance in economics?

Using clickers, students may respond to a professor's questions in class by pressing a button on a device resembling a television remote control; then view the frequency distribution of the class's answers. In this way, the professor may test the students' knowledge during the lecture, providing immediate feedback to the students and gaining information on how well students have understood the lecture. Previous research on clickers has focused on student satisfaction. The small subset of research that examines the effect of clickers on student performance uses bivariate tests and few controls. In the chapter, the authors test whether clickers enhance learning, as measured by test scores. They used clickers in two sections of the course Principles of Microeconomics. In one section, clickers were used on the supply and demand chapter and in the other section, clickers were used the elasticity chapter. The authors compare the achievement of students on material for which clickers were used with the achievement of students on material for which clickers were not used. Using a technique that takes account of the complex interactions of the relevant variables, they find no support for the hypothesis that clickers improve performance.