Event of the day
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 2010 • PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY • VOLUME 64, ISSUE 106
The Women’s Resource Center is hosting a career night titled “What Can You Do With a Degree in Women’s Studies?” The event will include career information, a panel of guest speakers, tips on pursuing the graduate field and free food!
When: 4:30 p.m. Where: Women’s Resource Center (Montgomery Hall)
WWW.DAILYVANGUARD.COM • FREE
INSIDE NEWS The SALPies are near SALP honors student leaders and exceptional student groups PAGE 2 How to liberate yourself, step-by-step Motivational seminar today to teach students how to achieve goals PAGE 2
ARTS
Beer drinking leads to Helles Lompoc releases three great brews in May PAGE 4 Opa Dorio! Dorio boasts Greek food as good as YiaYia used to make PAGE 4
Epitome of new age? Gayngs’ new album is a whole lot of something indefinable PAGE 5
OPINION
Learning is a click away Clickers promote class engagement, but there are drawbacks Stacy Austin Vanguard staff
The Center for Academic Excellence is sponsoring an initiative that will enhance student learning in larger classes in all departments. CAE’s large-class initiative supports a faculty-led “clicker task force” which is working to standardize the use of clickers. “Clickers” is the well-known term for a class response system used at Portland State. The clickers are handheld devices that students can use in class to transmit answers to questions that instructors ask. The clickers may be used for graded quizzes or to help facilitate class discussions. Instructors have options about whether to display class responses or not, and whether answers are graded or are merely used to document participation. Supporting standardized use of class response systems across all departments at PSU benefits students by having one clicker that may be used in multiple courses. For the classes that utilize these clickers, students purchase the clicker devices from the PSU Bookstore. The average cost of a clicker is $45 and the bookstore often buys back the clickers at the end of term, providing students with approximately half of what they initially paid for the clicker. “A grassroots group of faculty came together to standardize one process in the hope that students could buy a clicker for one class and hold onto it and use it in multiple classes,” said Janelle Voegele, CAE’s assistant director of teaching, learning and assessment.
Clicker technology has improved over the last several years. The clicker from eInstruction was chosen by the clicker task force to be implemented cross-departmentally next school year, which allows several response options, including true and false, multiple choice and full text options. Some faculty are currently using clickers, but the clicker task force is asking all instructors to use it next year for a standardized platform. Choosing one clicker also encourages eInstruction to pass on a discount to students. Many departments at PSU utilize clickers in both large and small classes. Some departments using the clickers include Biology, Chemistry, Communication, Business and Architecture, Voegele said. Communication associate professor Jeffrey Robinson said he uses clickers in his classes at PSU because he saw them as a benefit at Rutgers University, where he previously taught. “[PSU] is behind the curve in terms of large universities,” he said. “With PSU’s focus on larger
class sizes, clickers are the wave of the future.” At Rutgers, tech professionals set up the use of clickers in the classrooms and for professors’ computers. The school also provided Robinson with support which made using clickers “very easy,” he said. Voegele sees multiple benefits to using clickers in the classroom, but she said that they must be used properly to facilitate classroom learning. Clickers can promote critical thinking by facilitating class discussion and encouraging students to talk about their answers, she said. Some faculty members immediately project a graph on a screen showing students’ responses to questions. By doing so, Voegele said that they are provided with the perfect opportunity to ask questions like, “Why did you answer this way?” “[This] encourages debate and discussion amongst students,” she said. In addition, some clickers can store questions and answers within
CLICKERS continued on page three
SHAC treated its long waits; good prognosis SHAC’s new system for check-ins decreases student wait time
Oregonian oil Offshore drilling pollution is everyone’s problem PAGE 6
Drew Martig/Portland State Vanguard
Click it: A clicker currently used by students in larger classes.
the device, so students can refer back to that information to use while studying for upcoming exams. “[Using clickers for small quizzes in class] provides students with a good formative assessment,” Voegele said. “It offers them feedback before a big test.” Voegele and the clicker task force said that using clickers can help students be more successful in class, but it isn’t required to have a successful large class. It is also not a guarantee that using the clicker will automatically facilitate learning. “We’re excited for anything that helps promote quality learning,” Voegele said. “There are plenty of other ways to do it.” Clickers should not be used just to measure attendance or ask basic level questions, she said. “If you use the clicker just to ask students one question, or just for attendance, they might get annoyed,” said associate professor of Biology Mitch Cruzan. Clickers are useful for measuring attendance in class, in conjunction with critical thinking exercises, but there are problems with all attendance-tracking procedures, according to Robinson. “There is no perfect attendance method,” he said. “[Using the clickers is] pedagogically nice, as it allows an autonomous way for all to participate.” Due to various ethnic, cultural or gender backgrounds, some students may be less likely to speak in class or ask questions, Robinson said. He said clickers could help combat this. For example, one option for clicker use is to choose a student at random to answer a question. Clickers are especially helpful in large classes to equalize participation. “When a small number of students talk in class, the other students get in a habit of watching,” Voegele said. Cruzan has been using clickers for the last three years in general biology classes, which may contain 150 to 200 students.
Tamara K. Kennedy Vanguard staff
Before Student Health and Counseling enacted a new way to handle student healthcare services in fall 2009, patient wait time was a nightmare, according to SHAC director Mary Beth Collins. “[Now] most patients are in and out [of SHAC] in 30 minutes,” she said. Previously, students had to see a nurse and then wait to see a doctor, according to Collins. “Students were spending the day in the waiting room,” she said. “It was horrible.” Before 2004, SHAC had a standing-order nurse who directed
students, except for annual exams and other appointment-based services, according to Collins. The system worked well in the basement of Cramer Hall until the student population began to steadily increase. In 2004, SHAC moved to its current location at 1880 Southwest Sixth Avenue, where nurses are continuously added to the staff to deal with the rising number of patients. Since 2004, there has been a 17.6 percent growth in the end-of-term student head count, according to David Burgess of PSU’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning. This is a 3.13 percent yearly increase in the number of students attending Portland State. To help combat the patient wait problem, SHAC brought in Judy Bee, a consultant from Practice Performance Group, located in La Jolla, Calif. Bee was recommended by the American Medical
Association, according to Collins. During her three days at SHAC, Bee found several things wrong with its system. For example, students wanted to see providers instead of nurses and were spending time retelling their stories to several people under the old system, according to Collins. SHAC providers include nurse practitioners, physician assistants and physicians. Nurses are qualified to do certain things such as give and read tests for tuberculosis, strep throat, the common cold and pregnancies, according to Collins. After Bee’s visit, desk personnel were trained to divide students into emergency, urgent and routine patients, depending on the severity of the problem and the availability of providers. In addition, a new triage booth was introduced, which is to be used when front desk personnel are not confident about directing a patient or when the patient is not comfortable with the personnel’s decision, according to Collins.
Liana Shewey/Portland State Vanguard
SHAC: Created triage center to cut down
on wait times.
Front office triage appointments take about five minutes to assess a need. While in the booth, patients cannot be heard by others, said Emily Shulz, a three-year office specialist at SHAC.
SHAC continued on page three