{"id":2491,"date":"2014-09-22T14:33:53","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T21:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/ed-tech\/?p=2491"},"modified":"2014-12-03T15:42:54","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T23:42:54","slug":"clickers-in-chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/ed-tech\/2014\/09\/clickers-in-chemistry\/","title":{"rendered":"Clickers in chemistry: a classic case of data munging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clickers are a common piece of educational technology across college campuses, used\u00a0for in-class quizzes or to allow many voices to “speak” in a class discussion<\/a>. At Reed, clickers are most commonly used in the first two years of Chemistry courses, which are some of our larger classes (75 students per section in Chem 101) and bring together students from a variety of academic backgrounds. Clickers allow faculty to check student comprehension throughout class and actively engage students in a larger lecture environment.<\/p>\n

In addition to on-the-fly uses in class,\u00a0the data from clicker polling could be used to check student comprehension over time. Are a handful of students consistently incorrect in their answers? (If so, the instructor may be able to reach out to those students and offer additional assistance.) At a more basic level, “clicking in” could be used as a metric for attendance.<\/p>\n

\"python\"
A friendly (bit of) Python<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, before any of\u00a0that\u00a0<\/em>happens — one\u00a0would need information on the clickers themselves, the individual students, and what person\u00a0is connected to what device.<\/p>\n

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a classic data problem. We will solve this given three pieces of information, a good dose of logic, and a little help from our friends (in the form of a Python script).<\/p>\n

Here are our three pieces of (separate but equally useful) information:<\/p>\n

1) Class lists<\/strong>. These come by request from the Registrar’s Office, and contain:<\/p>\n