When I heard a story on NPR last week about the use of “clickers” to engage students in college classrooms, my opinion of the technology swung wildly: when they teased the story, I thought it was idiotic. “Clickers?” Isn’t that what they use to train pets?

When I heard how they were used in the class, I thought it was brilliant. Students, instead of just passively absorbing content, are forced to interact – primarily through answering multiple choice questions. Answers are then graphed out so the instructor can see what percentage of students is understanding the material. At the end of the story, they go into some detail about the more “advanced” clicker that allows for open-ended responses.

Wha? I’m sorry, that last sentence seems kind of odd to me, seeing as I was able to type it on a laptop, which if you enter a college classroom, everyone seems to have. Which makes me wonder why on earth these developers are trying to reinvent the wheel. Cole Camplese had a post on his blog recently about using Twitter in the classroom. Wouldn’t that be so much simpler (and cheaper) to implement? And wouldn’t it allow you to do more than just pick from a predefined set of answers?

Ah yes, I forgot. The point of higher education is to get students to think, but not too hard. They are, after all, preparing us to enter a challenging world where how far we go in life is determined by how well we answer multiple choice questions.

My mistake. Does this mean I don’t get a treat?

I heard an interesting story this morning on NPR regarding academic freedom in China. Professor Yang Shiqun of East China University of Political Science and Law was accused of discussing the Falun Gong sect in his class by some of his students. He denies ever doing so, and suspects his students made his accusation because of his questioning of the value of ancient Chinese culture. There was also some controversy about a blog posting he made, asking why such a thing could be happening.

After a brief Google search, I was able to find a translation of some slides for his class at China Digital Times. Here’s one of the slides:

“Suspect all” is a motto of Karl Marx’s. People tend to accept answers rather than to examine the process of searching for answers. Many simply accept other people’s conclusions. They don’t think hard about how the conclusions are reached and whether they are valid. Thus the knowledge they get is superficial, or might even be fake.

So to understand a complex issue, you need to get a large amount of information, and carefully consider it, especially when it contains opposing opinions.You also need to be ready to challenge the way of thinking indoctrinated by traditions and the education system.

Nothing too out of the ordinary here. In fact, it sounds like a very good description of the skills necessary in our information overloaded society (skills clearly lacking in many of the people in our own supposedly enlightened nation).

Something that gives me a bit of hope is the comments on Yang’s blog (that he apparently took down after being flooded with attacks) translated at The Foreign Expert. Here in the US we’re lead to believe there is no freedom of expression in China, but the discussion taking place seems to show that there is at least some room for dissenting voices.