How much time should I give students to answer a clicker question?
This depends greatly on the type and difficulty of the question: in most cases, it takes students between 30 seconds and a minute to process a question and be ready to answer individually or discuss. It then takes a few (1-4) minutes for productive discussion. The level of student discussion and the number of votes in is a good guide as to when to move on. When ~3/4 of the students have responded it is often a good time to announce end is near, then sound warning gong, count down out loud, or turn lights out to indicate that discussion should stop and students should “click in”. Instructors who decide when to end the polling based on the discussion around them often wait too long. While discussion around them will continue to focus on the question, in the rest of the room discussion has often moved on to non-class-related topics, making it harder to pull students back to class material. It is useful to poll the class after several weeks to see if they feel you are giving them too littl
