Callie Richmond for The New York Times
Children practiced using clickers for a quiz at Southgate Church of Christ in San Angelo, Tex.
By JAN HOFFMAN
Published: March 30, 2012
When sororities elect officers, this is how they typically conduct voting: Members write names on paper slips, which are then folded, collected, unfolded and counted. And if there are runoffs? Repeat process. When you’re electing 13 officers, the evening becomes a triumph of sisterly dedication over marathon tedium.
The sound of this venerable tradition crumbling? Click.
Nearly 200 Alpha Phi sisters at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign gathered in November in their chapter house with devices that they typically use for class — clickers, hand-held wireless devices with just a few buttons.
The names of three candidates were projected on a dining hall wall. Clickers were placed on tables, and a supervisor checked that nobody was hiding a second one in her lap. Voters clicked their choice: A, B or C. The results were transmitted on a laptop. Five minutes later, Colleen Leahy, a 20-year-old sophomore, was named president.
“I liked finding out quicker,” Ms. Leahy said. “Our lives are fast-paced.”
In recent years, college students have been bringing clickers to lecture halls, where professors require their use for attendance, instant polls and multiple-choice tests. Corporate executives sometimes distribute the devices at meetings, and then show survey responses immediately on Power Point slides. Just two of many companies that make clickers have sold nearly nine million units, which typically cost between $30 and $40 apiece, in under a decade. One the companies, Turning Technologies, sold 1.5 million in 2011 alone.
But clickers can now be found in some surprising corners of American life, too, as churches, fire departments, cruise ships and health care providers discover uses for them, essentially spreading the phenomenon of online crowdsourcing to off-line crowds. Fans of the devices say they are efficient, eco-friendly and techno-tickling, allowing audiences to mimic TV game-show contestants.
While giving an opinion by actually raising one’s hand may never become completely extinct, the devices can give voice to people too shy to speak up.
“Those who talk in class aren’t necessarily those who have the most to say,” said Eric J. Johnson, director of the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia Business School. “But with a clicker, everyone in the room has input and they can express their opinion anonymously.”
But critics say that feedback from clicker surveys is inherently superficial, foreclosing nuanced analysis. And they point out that they can become just one of many must-have devices that are easy to lose, like a Kindle or a cellphone.
All true, perhaps. But what about the fun factor?
Brianna Goodwin, a fire and life safety educator with the Colorado Springs Fire Department, teaches a class about fire prevention to middle-schoolers.
Last spring, to better engage them in techno-speak, their native tongue, her program purchased 120 units of a model sold by Macmillan. She hands them out to the students as they file in. “They are so pumped!” she said in a phone interview.
She warms up the students with pop culture questions. She then surveys their knowledge of the consequences of arson: injuries, fines, imprisonment. At the end of the session, she repeats the questions. Because she can instantly show the correct answer and a breakdown of responses, Ms. Goodwin said, the students “start cheering if they get the answer right.”
Whoops and hollers have also been erupting from an older crowd on the cruise ship Crystal Symphony. In January, Crystal Cruises began handing out clickers from Turning Technologies to guests for judging debate panelists and on Liars’ Club, a game show night.
“It’s like a Christmas toy,” said Bret Bullock, vice president of entertainment at Crystal Cruises. “Finding out how everyone is thinking is so much fun — you’re part of the show.”
The delighted shouts from middle-schoolers and seniors alike suggest that neither group is accustomed to having its opinions solicited. But with a clicker, “suddenly their voices are important,” said Professor James Katz, the director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers. “If people feel their opinions really count, they’ll be happy and likely to give more opinions.”
The dynamic of social comparison — understanding where you stand relative to your tribe — is also a draw. Clicker software satisfies that curiosity by immediately displaying a bar graph of responses in the room. “This is a new form of transparency for crowd psychology,” he said.
He added some cautions about using clickers, also called audience response systems. In a society in which checking the crowd’s opinion becomes the norm, Professor Katz said, taking risks or relying on one’s instincts may be devalued.
“Those who want to strike out in new directions and challenge the sentiments of a crowd, like artists and writers, have an additional burden with this technology because they can know that no one takes comfort in their vision,” he said. “There goes the Great American Novel.”
Clickers are also being used in team-building exercises. Paula Miller, an education coordinator for Whole Foods Market, purchased 105 of them last year. At employee meetings, she might hang up a white bed sheet near the cash registers and put up a slide with a multiple-choice vote about, say, where to hold the annual holiday party. Or she can create team competitions. Game on: bakery workers will click in as A; butchers, B, and so forth.
Southgate Church of Christ in San Angelo, Tex., has 150 clickers for its annual Bible Bowl on Saturday. This year, elementary and high school teams from six churches studied 1,322 questions about Genesis. At the contest, they will use clickers to answer 180 multiple-choice questions.
“The hardest ones are the ‘begats,’ ” said Dawn Stanley, the Bible Bowl coordinator. For example, “Which of the following was a son of Raamah?” Click: a. Dedan, b. Elishah, c. Madai, d. Havilah, e. Meshek. (The answer is a.)
As the benefits of clickers catch on, the clickers themselves, which require a base system that costs about $250 to record answers and produce real-time graphs, may face an uncertain future. Companies are plotting their obsolescence. Software from Poll Everywhere, for example, allows participants to text responses from their cellphones.
One fan is Wayne Cordeiro, the pastor of New Hope Christian Fellowship, an evangelical church in Honolulu. He knows that congregants peek at their smartphones during services, so sometimes, mid-sermon, he poses multiple-choice questions on a Power Point slide, such as: “If there was no chance of anyone ever finding out, I would: a. have sex outside marriage, b. do drugs, c. have someone exterminated.” Text your answer. Anonymity assured.
As congregants watched the responses roll in, nervous laughter and gasps erupted around the church, he said.
Mr. Cordeiro explains that he is merely following in the footprints set by Jesus. To preach to thousands on a hillside at Capernaum, Jesus asked Simon to row him out on the water.
“He didn’t have a microphone, so he used the bay as a natural amphitheater and the water as an amplification device,” Mr. Cordeiro said. “He just used the technology that was available.
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