Every college program has a required class that is particularly challenging, and for many business majors, that course is Accounting 101. To help students click with the complex material presented in this class, DePaul University’s School of Accountancy is using a new teaching tool – a clicker that resembles a television remote control.

Professors in 14 Accounting 101 class sections are using the clickers, or radio frequency classroom response systems, to increase student engagement and immediately assess whether students are understanding classroom lessons. The system consists of a radio frequency base unit and special software connected to a classroom computer, as well as wireless clickers for students and professors.

Here’s how it works: after covering an accounting concept, a professor quizzes the class by projecting a multiple choice question onto a screen. Students indicate their answer choices by pointing their remote controls and clicking on a corresponding A, B, C, D or E button. The answers are beamed via radio frequency to the system’s base unit and computer. The screen shows a clock ticking down a time limit set by the professor and a counter indicates the number of students that have responded. After the clock expires, the professor projects on the screen a bar graph that shows how many students chose each answer.

“I appreciate the immediate feedback,” said Susan Lueders, an accounting instructor who used clickers in her fall quarter class. “It let’s me know when it’s okay to move on to the next subject versus when to cover a concept again. This is valuable information that I didn’t have before. And because it’s interactive, students seem more engaged in class.”

Another benefit, Lueders said, is that students can use the devices to answer questions without classmates knowing how they responded. “Before, when I asked students to raise their hand if they wanted to review homework problem solutions I often received little or no response. Now I can say, ‘click on A for yes or B for no,’ and students respond more freely.”

The devices are part of a pilot program that may expand to other challenging courses at DePaul, said Accountancy Professor and College of Commerce Associate Dean Nancy Hill. Hill is a member of DePaul’s Teaching, Learning and Technology Committee, a faculty group that explores innovative teaching tools for improving academic quality at the university.

While the program is too new to know its impact yet, Hill said one goal is to better engage students in their learning, thereby reducing the student rate of Ds, Fs and dropped classes for particularly difficult, technical courses, which collectively can be 25 percent of the class. In addition to class-wide data, the system gathers individual student performance information on spreadsheets. This allows professors to identify students who are consistently falling behind and need extra assistance, Hill said.

“It’s often too late to wait until midterms to see how a student is doing,” Hill explained. “The clickers allow professors to check student performance on an ongoing basis and make sure students understand the material.”

Three different vendors produce clickers for universities across the country, according to Hill. DePaul’s system, called i-clicker, was invented at the University of Illinois and is now produced by Holtzbrinck Publishers. Classroom base receivers cost only about $100 per unit. Students buy the remote controls for about $20 if bought with their course textbooks or $33 separately. As the program expands, students will be able to use the same clickers for multiple classes.

Clickers appear to be growing in popularity in academia. DTC Worldwide, a United Kingdom-based firm that tracks international education technology market trends, predicts that eight million clickers, worth $350 million, will be sold primarily to universities in the United States annually by 2008, according to a CNET News.com story.