School recommends students postpone purchase of clickers

Updated Sept. 6

Tommy Lopez
Multimedia Editor 

It was 11:31 a.m. when Instructor John Skrobiszewski was able to begin lecturing. His class is supposed to begin over a half hour before. The issue didn’t have to do with Skrobiszewski arriving late to his INSC

201 class, called “Energy.” It didn’t have to do with his students being disruptive, or Harris Hall having a fire drill; the class was delayed because the students’ clickers weren’t working.

“I apologized to [the class] and I told them that the school appreciates all the time that we put into trying to fix the problem,” Skrobiszewski said.

VCU has recently changed companies for its classroom response technology devices, which are informally called “clickers.” The brand new devices were pulled from school bookstores later that day.

VCU’s Assistant Director for User Services Sam Kennedy acknowledged the issue that occurred in the Energy class on Thursday, Aug. 30, but said the school could not act directly in fixing the problem. Kennedy said that VCU had to wait for the company, Turning Technologies, to diagnose and respond to the issues.

A week later, on Sept. 6, the NXT clickers are expected to go back on sale around campus.

VCU Technology services confirmed that clickers from all three bookstores are affected by a firmware issue. Turning Technologies began visiting classes Tuesday and has fixed over 2,500 devices so far. Students are able to update their clickers through Friday in the basement of Cabell Library, as Turning Technologies staff continue to visit classrooms.

The school recommended that, “students not purchase a clicker until the issue is resolved,” according to a statement on its website on Aug. 30.

“I was pretty shocked by the 50-plus dollar price tag,” sophomore Mitchell Meyerhoeffer said. His clicker was working from the beginning of the Energy class and he said he was frustrated with having to sit and wait through the issues.

The new NXT clickers cost over $50 new, which is more expensive than the previous CPS model by eInstruction which cost $25 per remote. However, there are rebates available for the new models, and students have the option of renting them. Because of the $15 registration fee attached to the previous models, if a student takes four or more classes that employ the use of clickers, then the newer models will cost less money in the end.

Skrobiszewski predicts that the change will ultimately benefit students and teachers because of the new clicker’s capabilities. But, he says faculty must become accustomed to the software.

“It’s just like anything else, it’s going to take time so we can get used to it,” Skrobiszewski said.

Some students aren’t as understanding.

“If they’re going to make us spend $53 then they should make sure we’re getting the right ones for our classes,” freshman Andrew Scott said following the disruption in Skrobiszewski’s class.

Over 90 school faculty use the clickers in their classrooms. Some, like Skrobiszewski, make the purchase optional.

“If I get one, I’m going to make sure it’s the right one,” junior Ken Camp said.

The clicker company switch stemmed from a committee VCU formed in the fall of 2011. It was made of up faculty from different science departments and the statistics department, as well as members of VCU’s Technology Services department.

The committee specifically reviewed three different vendors before choosing Turning Technologies. According to a Technology Services report from the committees’ findings, features, ease of use, size and cost were factors in favor of Turning Technologies. The committee listed wireless network interference, response histogram generation delays, and buggy software as reasons for VCU to turn away from eInstruction’s CPS.

The Student Wellness Center had been using Turning Technology previously and the biology department conducted a pilot program in 14 sections of a class in the spring of 2012. The committee weighed the positive feedback from the pilot heavily in its final decision.

The technology issues continue a week after VCU faced internet failures and student complaints about their inability to access both VCU eservices and Blackboard during the first day of classes on Aug. 23.