As students were settling into their first week of classes, they may have noticed an increased amount of smartphones being used during lectures in place of the normal "clickers."
That increased smartphone usage might be due to professors opting for Top Hat, an interactive educational app, that Ohio University students previously had to pay $72 to receive a lifetime subscription. However, earlier this year the university obtained a license, which allowed students to use the app's software for free.
Top Hat is available on both mobile devices and computers, and is free when used with an OU student ID and password. It allows professors to post polls, quizzes and single questions for students to respond to, creating quick responses and an interactive lecture setting.
In the past, some students used Student Response Systems — otherwise known as clickers — which also allowed students to respond to questions digitally.
At the Bobcat Depot in Baker Center, a new clicker is $36 before tax.
The average student at a public, four-year university spends about $1,300 a year on supplies, some of which goes toward items such as clickers, according to the College Board’s website.
Deborah Murray, an associate professor of nutrition, said she supports the use of Top Hat in class, and added that it is “much more cost effective.”
“Students always have their cell phones,” Murray said. “This way they don’t have to worry about having a clicker, turning in a clicker or using a clicker.”
Some professors, such as Kim Thompson, an environmental and plant biology professor, are more hesitant to replace their classroom clickers with Top Hat.
“I think it is unfair to assume that all students have smartphones,” Thompson said, citing the fact that she had tried to utilize Top Hat in the past but found the app only properly worked when students had smartphones.
She does not allow the use of smartphones on her quizzes because they could be used to look at notes. To maintain her policy, she said, she could not allow smartphones to be used to take quizzes.
Grant Palma, a freshman studying biology, did not believe his professor was even aware that Top Hat could be used.
“I don’t know if he necessarily knows about Top Hat. … It’s really just about, probably, the professor’s knowledge and background with Top Hat and experiences,” Palma said. “Clickers, they’ve been used longer by him. So I guess they work and he knows they work.”
Palma also said the cost of a clicker is not that significant for a “broke college student.”
Bailey Williams, a freshman studying political science, was critical of the university’s approach to Top Hat and the continued use of clickers.
“It seems the university isn’t pushing hard enough for professors to use Top Hat,” Williams said. “I feel they should make a concentrated effort to make this the new norm, yet they’re complacent in the fact they get money from students buying clickers.”
Thompson acknowledged that the university was shifting its overall technology policies, and that the clickers could be phased out for smartphone alternatives, such as Top Hat.
“We are at a turning point,” she said.
