As much as I like to complain about student ignorance abotu basic facts about government and history I wasn't quite prepared for yesterday. A small group of my fellow faculty and staff types gathered for a demonstration of clickers which can be used to assess what students know and whether certain concepts are being learned.
As a quick example of how it works the demonstrator asked the gathering to click yes or no to the following: "Lincoln was the first Republican president."
The results: 7 yes, 8 no.
I'll lay off my students from now on.