DESIGNING CLICKER QUESTIONS THAT ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING IN A TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED PRACTICAL LAB SETTING A. Sen Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine & Health Sciences, Monash University Sunway Campus (MALAYSIA) arkendu.sen@monash.edu Abstract INTRODUCTION: Clickers or Classroom Response Systems (CRS) are handheld electronic devices used to elicit anonymous student responses to questions using electronic on-screen presentations wherein the results of students' responses are also immediately displayed, hence giving immediate feedback. However, it is the pedagogy rather than the CRS technology that is important. CRS is a valid and effective tool for evaluation of learning, and has good predictive value, usability and benefits in a curriculum focused on interaction. BACKGROUND: With ever-increasing enrolment in professional courses like medicine in the Asia pacific, the constraint of adequate student-teacher ratio poses a challenge to ensure that all students within a large cohort achieve the learning outcomes and competencies in practical skills. To overcome this, this study proposes the use of CRS within a practical lab based setting. CRS use in Practical/skills based curriculum (except in Physics) has not been studied extensively. CRS question should have an explicit pedagogic purpose consisting of a content goal, a process goal, and a metacognitive goal. Questions can be designed with the objective of directing students' attention, stimulating specific cognitive processes, communicating feedback both to instructor and students, facilitating the articulation and confrontation of ideas and measuring learning outcomes in achieving competence in practical skills. OBJECTIVE: This study was conducted with the objective to elicit feasible ways in designing CRS questions in practical/ skills based learning that can assess and stimulate higher cognitive levels of application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation as well as in the psychomotor domain. METHODOLOGY: Principles of a good CRS questions were presented as preset questions in a semi structured interview with a purposive snowball sample of an experienced Clinical anatomy practical Lecturer and a Educational Technologist. Through in-depth interviews, opinions on designs and the logistics of administering CRS questions that aid active learning were coded into themes and analysed. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: In answering the research question of what the principles and feasible ways to design effective CRS questions to improve learning outcomes of a active learning environment in health sciences could be, this study, came up both the reviews on literature as well as expert opinions on the following themes related to CRS questions : traditional Vs clinical Anatomy questions , testing deeper and active learning, tactics for designing advanced CRS questions, number and time to answer, promoting student discussion, maintaining engagement to the teaching session after a CRS question. CONCLUSION: CRS questions that aids active learning in Practical lab needs thorough and in-depth design that is different from traditional CRS questions in a lecture setting. This study highlights the need to design CRS questions that target higher order psychomotor and cognitive processes. It also stresses the importance of logistics of administering the CRS questions within a session for promoting discussion especially clinical photographs and clinical case scenarios in CRS questions as triggers towards promoting active learning. Keywords: Classroom Response System, Design of Questions, Technology Enhanced, Practical learning, Active Learning Proceedings of INTED2012 Conference. 5th-7th March 2012, Valencia, Spain. ISBN: 978-84-615-5563-5 3246