This semester an increasing number of professors are using a new gadget, and soon it might be a standard feature in many classrooms. The iClicker is six inches long, two inches wide, has six big buttons, and it costs forty dollars in the campus bookstore.

iClickers are basically remote controls that allow students to answer multiple choice questions by pressing a button A to E. This way professors can then poll their students in real-time.

Each iClicker has its own serial number, which the professor can trace back to the student who “clickered” the answer once the product is registered. But many professors choose not to do this, making the answers anonymous.

Mark Carlson, who teaches Biology 111, is using the device this semester. And he does not care about accuracy as much as participation.

“In my class, if you get it right or wrong, I don’t really care. I get to know how well the students understand the material and if I need to [I can] tailor something either in that lecture or the next lecture. It allows [students] to assess their own performance, and it’s a very safe way to do it,” said Carlson.

In lecture halls, sometimes filled with over two hundred students, the iClicker is a way for professors to make sure that everyone is on the same page. After all the students answer, a graph can be projected, showing the percentage of each answer received. Usually, a discussion ensues. Students can judge how well they understand the material, and compare their understanding with that of their peers.

“It’s a good way to get credit in class for your answers,” said sophmore Melody Holtz. “It’s a way to make [learning] more interactive. It kind of gets you more involved.”

Three of Hotlz’s classes include regular iClicker questions.

Small departments can provide iClickers for the classrooms when needed, but many bigger departments can’t, and this puts the responsibility, and the cost, on the students.

“I know that students complain a lot about the cost. I think it’s becoming less of an issue because more classes are using it so you can use it over and over and then it becomes cheaper in the long run,” Carlson said.

Over a four-year span, forty dollars is not much. That is, until they come out with a second edition.