Using Student Response Clickers to Maximize Impact and Evaluation of Extension Presentations to Stakeholders.

Student response clickers are currently used in various applications in formal classroom settings.  These clickers allow educators to take attendance, assess student knowledge of course material during lecture or exams and provide review activities for students.  This tool can also be applied to Extension meetings with questions posed at both the beginning and end of presentations.  Questions at the beginning of the meeting can provide real-time feedback on the demographic makeup of the audience and their interests.  Though a general idea of audience interests are usually known prior to a meeting, this data would then allow Extension personnel to pinpoint important areas to focus on during the meeting, specialized to that particular audience.  Questions were posed using clickers prior to a recent Extension meeting related to the age range and farm size of participants as well as their interest in using switchgrass for bioenergy and their interest in using switchgrass for forage.  Questions posed at the end of the meeting could be used for evaluation purposes and to identify the effectiveness of the informational meeting.  At the same meeting described above, participants were asked about their relative change in knowledge and interest in switchgrass use for bioenergy.  The majority of participants identified that they liked using the clickers.  Additional information will be discussed on how to incorporate the questions into Powerpoint presentations and other examples of questions and responses.  Student clickers have important applications that can be utilized by Extension professionals to maximize their effectiveness in serving stakeholders.