Abstract:

The Faculty of Medicine at University of Castilla - La Mancha (UCLM) started in 1998 an innovative method for teaching and learning. Students are divided into groups of 25 people maximum, and are told to teach their classmates all concepts suggested by their teachers, generally using PowerPoint multimedia presentations. During these sessions, the teachers have to observe and assess the activity. Medical Physics is a four-month long subject taught during the first year of the degree.

In this context, we used remote response devices (clickers) not only to increase the students participation but also to allow them to evaluate their classmates. Our experience shows that, at the beginning, students refused to make an assessment of their classmates, and when they were told to do so, they graded very good marks. After a few sessions, the audience demanded better oral presentations from the students doing the presentation and they gave them more objective marks. We also used clickers to increase participation and to generate discussions about any subject. All the responses, right or wrong, were recorded and qualified, letting us consider their participation in global marks.

Students made a satisfactory progress and were very interested in the response devices, and they even suggested using them in other subjects as a new method for increasing their own motivation.

Keywords:

Remote response device, clickers, physics, medicine.