  Peer Instruction (PI) is a student-centered instructional approach developed
at Harvard by Eric Mazur (1997). The method has been welcomed by the science
community and adopted by a large number of colleges and universities, due among
other reasons to its common sense approach and its documented effectiveness. In
PI, the progression of any given class depends on the outcome of real-time
student feedback to ConcepTests: multiple-choice conceptual questions. In the
early 1990s, students responded to ConcepTests using flashcards showing their
answer. Instructors would then estimate the proportion of students holding each
alternative conception. A few years later Mazur began using wireless handheld
devices - colloquially called clickers- to replace the flashcards. Previous
users of clickers in university classrooms had reported benefits such as
increased rates of attendance and decreased rates of attrition (Owens et al.,
2004; Lopez-Herrejon & Schulman, 2004). This paper empirically measures the
specific contribution of clickers to conceptual learning and traditional
problem solving skills as compared to low-budget flashcards. Results show that
clickers do not provide any learning advantage when compared to flashcards.
Nevertheless, clickers offer many advantages from a teaching perspective which
should be considered.
