The Student Senate passed Student Government Resolution No. 8 during its Sept. 23 meeting, urging Manship School of Mass Communication professors to stop using the iClicker.
The legislation, authored by senators Joanie Lyons and Kensie Yeates, is “a resolution to urge and request the Manship School to adapt to using exclusively the Turning Technologies ResponseCard RF Clickers,” according to the SG website. The resolution passed with 93 percent of the vote.
Currently, students must have an iClicker for some mass communication courses and the ResponseCard for some general education classes.
The two senators distributed a survey to students in their mass communication classes regarding the clickers prior to proposing the resolution. Lyons said she hopes the results, along with social media reaction, will convince professors to switch.
On the bookstore website, a new iClicker Hybrid Class Response System costs $41.30, and a new Response Card RF by Turning Tech with LCD is $42.65. The iClicker app, Reef Polling, is free to download, but users must purchase a subscription. A six-month subscription costs $9.99.
“Finances do affect students,” Lyons said. “I think if we show them that students actually care, the fact that we created a survey and that students actually took the survey, if we even just showed in Manship fashion [that] people were replying to our tweets already, that this is an important issue.”
The LSU Bookstore website lists only MC 2035 Digital Brands as using the iClicker, and Lyons said she does not know of any other department which uses the device.
The legislation emerged after Lyons met with Andrea Miller, the Manship associate dean for undergraduate studies and administration. Lyons said she understands the clicker choice to be the professor’s preference.
“From what we understand, it’s just whatever they would like to use,” Lyons said. “I don’t think that there’s any benefits to it. I think that you can track the same answers and things like that. I’m not really sure what the difference is.”
While debating the resolution, senator Jacob Phagan spoke in its favor, saying that using two different clickers seemed redundant. Senator Savanah Dickinson raised concerns about professors’ potential responses to the legislation.
Dickinson, who previously worked for The Daily Reveille, said she spoke with Miller at a luncheon about the clickers. Dickinson said the Faculty Senate attempted legislation for a universal clicker, but professors were resistant.
The Faculty Senate adopted a resolution in 2009, encouraging professors to use TurningPoint clickers across the university.
One senator asked the authors if they had any ideas for a buy-back program for students who have already purchased the extra clicker.
“We’d have to see what we can do about it,” Lyons said. “I’m not really sure how we would go about creating a buy-back program. We would definitely have to look into that more.”
Mass communication sophomore Meagan Morvant said she did not find out about the Reef Polling app until after she purchased the physical iClicker. When she found out about the extra clicker, Morvant went to the bookstore to make sure it was something she really needed.
“They have the same exact function,” Morvant said. “Based on the questions in class, we could use a normal clicker. They’re all A, B, C, D. You don’t need any other functionality.”