Book Review of Clickers in Action: Increasing Student Participation in

Chemical Education Today edited by

Cheryl Baldwin Frech University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, OK 73034-5209

Clickers in Action: Increasing Student Participation in General Chemistry by Margaret R. Asirvatham W. W. Norton & Co.: New York, NY, 2009. 256 pp with media disk. ISBN 978-0393933536 (paper). $40. reviewed by Matthew J. Nee

The readers of this Journal have likely witnessed the rapid rise of classroom response systems, or clickers, in their own or other departments. With the push of a button, clickers facilitate instant, anonymous student feedback during class. A receiver coupled to the instructor's computer collects and analyzes the data to provide a snapshot of student responses to questions. Asirvatham's book condenses several years of experience working with clickers to jumpstart educators interested in using this technique. The book is divided into three sections. The first discusses the use of clickers, weighing their potential advantages and drawbacks before moving on to address practical aspects of their introduction to the classroom. The second section (which comprises fully 75% of the book) is a compendium of classroomtested, clicker-based questions with explanations and common student responses. The last section discusses a few in-class demonstrations, with emphasis on the use of clickers as a means of enhancing student engagement. Educators wishing to introduce clickers into their courses will find all three sections helpful, particularly if they need evidence to counter resistance to using clickers at their home institutions. The writing style is simple and easy to digest; techniques needed for successful undergraduate instruction are clearly articulated, while each chapter is as selfcontained as it could be. Important concepts are sometimes repeated more often than necessary, but the reminders are appreciated nonetheless. Not surprisingly, people with experience with classroom response systems will benefit the most from the first section, which addresses the effect of clickers on student learning and engagement and discusses important aspects of course design and implementation. Particularly important for lowering resistance to adopting clicker technology is a comparison of the older (and notoriously unreliable) infrared systems with the muchimproved second-generation clickers, which use radio frequency transceivers for communication of responses. The common objection that clickers do not always work has largely been countered by improved technology, although some instructors may not be aware of this progress. For those interested in further reading about the use and benefits of clickers, a list of references is provided. Although this list is not exhaustive, it does provide a useful platform for exploring the educational research literature. In addition, both new and experienced users will appreciate the frank discussion of the author's own experiences regarding the practical aspects of the technology, ranging from appropriate uses 784

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Vol. 87 No. 8 August 2010

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of clickers to administrative concerns such as grading and cheating. Most common concerns are confronted head-on (although sometimes too briefly) and with an emphasis on improving the student learning experience. The extensive catalog of sample questions is organized by topic and arranged according to a generic general chemistry curriculum. For most (but not all) questions, a histogram of student responses from a general chemistry course is given, along with the author's view of the question's level of difficulty. Readers should recognize that certain types of questions are better suited to clicker use than others; reviewing the sample questions gives the reader a basis for incorporating clickers into their own courses by providing them with guidance in this area. For each question, the author comments on the material being covered; she also provides hints for directing student discussion after polling. Such discussion is crucial for maximizing the impact of classroom response systems. Readers frustrated with their own efforts with a clicker system are advised to consider not only the material presented but also the way in which it is presented, an approach that will help students reap the greatest reward from introspection, peer discussion, and instructor guidance. Experienced users may find types of questions they have not considered or ways of presenting material via peer discussion that may prevent early misunderstandings. All of the sample questions in the second section are also on a CD enclosed on the back cover of the book. The questions are in PowerPoint format and can be ported directly into lecture slides. The slides can be edited in every way: even figures are easily converted to editable drawn objects, allowing for the introduction of color or shading if desired. Clickers in Action concludes with useful notes on incorporating clickers into classroom demonstrations. While many readers may already do this, the author strongly encourages such practice by emphasizing that a demonstration that generates student thought both before and after it is performed engages students in a way that encourages not just predictive thought but also the reevaluation of expectations. More importantly, the conclusion prods instructors to use clickers to encourage discussion and assess student understanding in ways that break from the traditional “lecture and quiz” format. One can easily imagine similar incorporations that involve media presentations or other nontraditional learning tools. Such a conclusion aims to inspire the reader to consider clickers as an evolving technology, the use of which will continue to improve as instructors find novel approaches. This reviewer suspects that others will soon be inspired to write more exhaustive discussions of clicker techniques themselves, with a more rigorous discussion of the available research on their effectiveness. This was not Asirvatham's purpose here: her book is intended as a useful tool for getting started in the use of the clickers, and it will benefit educators in that position. Matthew J. Nee is in the Department of Chemistry at Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101; matthew.nee@ wku.edu. DOI: 10.1021/ed100528h Published on Web 06/09/2010

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r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

Chemical Education Today

Investigating Chemistry through Inquiry: Experiments Using Open and Guided Inquiry Approaches by Donald L. Volz and Ray Smola Vernier Software & Technology: Beaverton, OR, 2009. ISBN 978-1929075539 (softcover). Includes CD-ROM with open- and guided-inquiry versions of all activities. $48. reviewed by Brittland K. DeKorver

A set of entirely inquiry-centered laboratory experiments would catch the attention of any teacher. But if the manual also boasted additional tips on teaching and grading inquiry labs, safety, materials preparation, as well as detailed descriptions of instrument setup and troubleshooting, it would be difficult to overlook, indeed. In Investigating Chemistry through Inquiry: Experiments Using Open and Guided Inquiry Approaches, Donald L. Volz and Ray Smola combine well-planned inquiry labs with all the supplementary information an instructor could hope to find in a lab manual. Investigating Chemistry through Inquiry outlines 25 experiments that can be conducted as open inquiry, in which the students generate their own questions, or guided inquiry, where the question to be investigated is chosen from a list of options provided by the instructor. Each laboratory session begins with a Preliminary Activity that follows the basic format of a traditional “cookbook” experiment. The tasks will be familiar to any general chemistry instructor: determining the change in temperature when baking soda and vinegar react, comparing conductivity of various sodium chloride solutions, assessing the identifying characteristics of a pure substance, measuring the energy content of a fuel, calculating the stoichiometric coefficients for an acid-base reaction, and so on. The students are given an explicit procedure for data gathering and led through the analysis by follow-up questions. Each Preliminary Activity ends with a prompt to plan the main investigation, select a question to investigate, write out the procedure, and determine what safety precautions should be followed. To those unfamiliar with inquiry, the Preliminary Activities may appear to be complete laboratory experiments able to stand apart from the rest of the text. However, the authors employ these activities to lay the groundwork needed to introduce students to the topic, the various Vernier sensors, and unfamiliar techniques. The activities let students gain the necessary skills and confidence to plan their own inquiry investigation. For open-inquiry experiments, these activities also prompt students to think about researchable questions to pursue for the main investigation. The experiments cover topics typically taught during a general chemistry course: physical and colligative properties, stoichiometry, thermodynamics, titrations, kinetics, and even nuclear radiation. Each experiment is flexible, allowing the instructor to select which learning objectives will be the focus. The materials used in the experiments (all of which are listed in Appendix D in fewer than three pages) are also r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

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somewhat adaptable, allowing instructors to use the reagents and other materials available to them. The Teacher Information included in each experiment gives helpful tips about where substitutions are possible and where they should be avoided. Most of the text is composed of the Teacher Information Sections, each of which includes a brief introduction for the experiment, solutions to the preliminary activity, possible researchable questions and relevant sample data, safety information, troubleshooting and common pitfalls, and other practical tips. Also included is a CD-ROM with digital files of both versions of the Preliminary Activities. (Only the open-inquiry versions of the Preliminary Activities are included in the text.) The authors also include a brief guide to using the CD in Appendix A. Appendices B, C, F, and G offer guidance on using the Vernier Logger Pro, other Vernier products, sensor information, and specialized sets of instructions for student use, respectively. Appendix D contains the aforementioned equipment and supplies lists, organized into the categories of consumables, nonconsumables, and chemicals. Appendix E provides additional safety information. Because data gathering in the described experiments is heavily dependent on the use of the Vernier devices, some instructors may be hesitant to read or purchase this book. However, I would expect that all but six of the 25 experiments could be done with instruments found in a standard chemistry lab (pH meter, thermometer, voltmeter, gas pressure sensor), with only a few of the experiments requiring lesscommon instruments such as a conductivity probe, colorimeter, radiation monitor, or oxidation-reduction potential sensor. If an instructor chose not to use Vernier instruments or even the lab experiments provided within, the organized, rational format of the lessons would still prove to be an excellent guide for implementing inquiry in the classroom. To further aid instructors, the book includes an introductory chapter titled “Doing Inquiry Experiments”. In this chapter, the authors argue that the students' laboratory experience should not end after they have conducted their preliminary activity, generated (or selected) a researchable question, planned their experiment, and carried out their plan. Instead, Volz and Smola outline how to lead students in their communications of the results, provide a summarizing conclusion, and how to assess student performance. Included is a copy of a grading rubric designed by the Oregon Department of Education for assessing student performance in inquiry-lab exercises. Investigating Chemistry through Inquiry might disappoint the instructor seeking a set of novel experiments to expand his or her curriculum. For anyone desiring a blueprint for planning inquiry labs, however, this text is a valuable tool. The authors have provided both the content and an effective method for implementing inquiry lab experiments in the classroom. Brittland K. DeKorver is in the Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706; brittlandk@ chem.wisc.edu. DOI: 10.1021/ed100566x Published on Web 06/09/2010


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Learning To Solve Complex Scientific Problems (edited by David H. Jonassen) Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: New York, NY, 2007. xxii þ394 pp., with figures and tables. ISBN 978-0805859188. $140.00. reviewed by Frank L. Somer, Jr.

It would be a rare reader of JCE whose interest would not be at least a little piqued by the title of this book. Most educators would agree that problem solving is the essence of chemistry and that teaching problem solving is the most challenging aspect of teaching chemistry, especially at the introductory level. I started reading this book with the secret hope of finding some deep, general principles that would help me guide my students to problem-solving prowess, but with the more realistic expectation of picking up a few practical ideas to try out in my classes. While (alas) I do not think this book has revolutionized my understanding of how to teach chemical problem solving, it did provide some useful pointers, as well as some thought-provoking data and interpretations on student problem solving, and was overall a worthwhile read. I was actually disabused of my aforementioned secret hope while reading the introduction to the book: the vast majority of the problems we ask our students to solve in courses (e.g., the typical “word problems” at the ends of textbook chapters) are not considered “complex” for the purposes of the book (although I am sure many students would disagree!) and hence are not a direct target for its analyses. The stated purpose of the book is, in fact, to address the disconnect between the textbook problems students encounter in their coursework and the complex problems encountered in the workplace: problems that are “...ill-structured, with multiple goals, multiple solution methods, unanticipated problems, no explicit means for determining appropriate actions, and distributed skills” (p. viii). The authors tackle this task in 15 chapters, divided into two main sections: one on the theory of problem solving in general, and another on its applications in teaching science and engineering. A third section, essentially a chapter unto itself, discusses future research directions for the field. The first section of the book consists of six chapters written by cognitive scientists, expounding various theoretical aspects of problem solving. At this point I should make clear that I am not a cognitive scientist (in fact, I am a physical chemist); I read this book from the perspective of one interested in the fields of learning and pedagogy inasmuch as their lessons can improve my teaching, but for whom those fields are not primary research interests. As such, I found some of the material in this first section somewhat dense and technical, and rather than trying to understand it in the depth and detail of an expert, I used it mostly to learn key definitions and get the general “lay of the land” of the field. I also found myself regularly referring back to these chapters to clarify terms and concepts encountered in the later, more applied chapters. That said, I did find the topics in this section (such as multitasking, team problem solving, and the role of working memory in problem solving) interesting and relevant to the stated aim of bridging the gap between traditional coursework and workplace expectations. 786


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There were also several occasions in which the theories under discussion made clear contact with my teaching experience, suggesting both explanations for familiar phenomena and causal relationships I had not considered before. An especially insightful example is the idea that one's problem-solving performance can suffer from “stereotype threat” (e.g., the fear or pressure induced by thinking, “I meet description X and therefore cannot be expected to succeed in a technical subject like chemistry.”), with the reduced performance resulting from working-memory resources being used to suppress the stereotype threat instead of to solve the problem at hand. Furthermore, experimental findings indicate that pressure has a greater negative effect on the problem-solving performance of highworking-memory individuals than low-working-memory individuals. This implies that, all else being equal, students with the greatest potential are the ones most hampered by stereotype threat. The second section of the book consists of eight chapters written by science and engineering academics who discuss applications of problem-solving theory to courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Their discussion centers largely on engineering courses, and the science courses studied were mostly in the field of physics, but the ideas addressed are general enough to be transferred readily to chemistry. Topics include moving students from simple to complex problem solving, transfer of learning between disciplines (framed in terms of the familiar lament of science instructors about the poor mathematical preparation of their students), and teaching students to work in interdisciplinary problem-solving teams. I found the second section to be very interesting and useful reading. It is, by and large, replete with course data, answers from student surveys about instructional methods, and other practical information. (One odd exception is a chapter titled “Metaproblem Spaces and Problem Structure”. It seemed sufficiently well written, but it was almost entirely theoretical and would have been better placed in the first section.) Several of the projects discussed also underscore the ambitious aims of workers in this field and their potential for yielding tangible benefits, a particular example being a chapter focused on teaching engineering students a systematic approach to the early, creative stages of the design process. While “systematic creativity” might seem almost an oxymoron, the authors lay out a detailed protocol for implementation in courses and show data confirming its benefits to student performance. The final section outlines some future research directions for the field of scientific problem solving. It is organized into “themes,” each of which begins by synopsizing the current state of a particular area of inquiry and ends with several specific questions to be answered by future research. The overall impression (given by this section and the book as a whole) is that of a field in which much work has been done but which is also very much in the process of being formed. This is, of course, good news for anyone interested in entering the field, because many foundational contributions can still be made. For such an individual, this book would seem an invaluable resource, providing an understandable yet fairly detailed “road map” to the active areas of research, both present and future, and extensive lists of references to familiarize oneself with the relevant literature. Overall, this book is a useful introduction to a field of obvious relevance to chemical education. Though it occasionally


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suffers from the uneven writing and repetition that often plague edited books, it is basically well conceived and well organized and makes for interesting reading. Aside from being of interest to science educators, since industry cannot realistically expect academia to provide science and technology workers “fully formed” right out of school, this book could also be a useful resource for helping new graduates transition into the complex problem-solving environments they will need to navigate throughout their careers. Frank L. Somer, Jr., is in the Department of Natural Sciences, Columbia College, Columbia, MO 65216; [email protected]. DOI: 10.1021/ed100560j Published on Web 06/10/2010

Foundations in Biochemistry by Jenny Loertscher and Vicki Minderhout Pacific Crest: Lisle, IL, 2009. 140 pages, paper cover 978-1602635241. $22. reviewed by Mark T. Werth

Foundations in Biochemistry is a workbook designed to accompany an instructor's chosen biochemistry textbook. The book is based on the process-oriented, guided-inquiry learning (POGIL) approach to teaching. There are 36 sections or activities that cover the topics typically found in a first-semester undergraduate biochemistry course. Implementing the workbook in the classroom does not require prior experience with the POGIL approach. This reviewer had no teaching experience with POGIL prior to using Foundations of Biochemistry last fall. Answer keys for the activities are available in the instructor's section on the publisher's Web site. Additionally, facilitation plans for each activity are being added to the instructor's Web site as well. The facilitation plans, which provide guidance for implementing the lessons, are based on the workbook authors' experience using them in the classroom. As appropriate, the facilitation plans address cognitive, affective, and social issues related to the given activity. Loertscher and Minderhout have conducted their biochemistry courses using the lectureless POGIL approach for many years. Should an instructor choose to fully adopt their approach, everything that one requires is available. However, I expect that many instructors will choose to adopt a mix of traditional lecture and POGIL activities that is appropriate for their particular classroom goals. If that is the case, then adopting the workbook requires some thoughtful planning on the part of the instructor. Approximately one-third of the activities require significant preparation by the student before entering the classroom. The preactivity instructions for these exercises ask that the student prepare a reading outline for most or all of the relevant chapter and perform a few additional focused tasks as preparation. Roughly another third of the activities r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

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require a lesser degree of preparation. Obviously, that leaves about one-third of the sections that do not require preactivity work. For a variety of reasons, this reviewer was not yet ready to make the change to a completely POGIL classroom. One concern was how well the students could be transitioned into starting a topic before coming to lecture. Several strategies were employed as attempts to minimize the preactivity work expected of the students. At times, lecture was used to provide students with the background material. For example, Michaelis-Menten kinetics was introduced in lecture prior to giving the students the enzyme inhibition activity (Section 9). Similarly, lecture time was spent introducing myoglobin. Students were then asked to do the brief questions in the preactivity, without the reading outline, prior to starting the hemoglobin activity (Section 6). In a few cases, course notes were adapted into a short focused preactivity assignment. In other cases, students were asked to do the preactivity tasks listed in the workbook with the exception of the reading outline. Obviously, by having their students complete the reading outlines, Loertscher and Minderhout expose the students to content not explicitly addressed in the activities. Another difference between the environment in which Loertscher and Minderhout designed their exercises and many biochemistry classrooms will be the length of the class period. Reading the facilitation plans, one quickly realizes that the activities are planned for 75-min class sessions. The workbook authors are aware that many instructors have 50-min class periods, and the facilitation plans offer instructions to help adapt an activity to a shorter class period. While not ideal, it was this instructor's experience that it is possible to start an activity in the middle of a class period and finish it during the next class period. The final implementation issue that this instructor encountered concerned feedback to students. If an instructor is too ready to provide answers to the Critical Thinking Questions, the students will end up relying too much on the instructor. At some point, however, students do need feedback to assure them that they are on the correct path. As Loertscher and Minderhout note in their facilitation plans, instructors with 50-min periods will have less time to provide feedback during class discussion at the end of period. Each section of the book contains a few postactivity exercises or problems that can be done as homework. On occasion, this instructor had students or groups turn in copies of their responses to the Critical Thinking Questions. These were reviewed to find general issues needing attention, but they were not graded for “correctness”. Other instructors may find that their quiz or homework approaches provide sufficient feedback to the students. This instructor found the activities to be an important step toward helping the students “see the forest for the trees”. In particular, several of the exercises are good at emphasizing the role of noncovalent interactions throughout biochemistry. Students learn to interpret graphs on their own as they work through hemoglobin and enzyme inhibition sections in particular. The exercises in the metabolism sections focus on putting metabolism into a context. A good example is found in Section 29, where pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme activity and the citric acid cycle metabolism are explored


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within the context of literature data for metabolic flux in proliferating rat thymocytes that model tumor cells. Other exercises focus on developing problem-solving skills and introduce students to working with recent literature articles. The activities were highly effective in helping students to engage with the material. As an example, after the lipids exercise, the remaining lecture notes took longer than usual to finish because the students were now prepared to ask really good questions during lecture. An anonymous survey was conducted in the reviewer's classroom at the middle of the semester. This group of students liked a mix of POGIL (about a third of the time) and traditional lecture approaches. In general, students self-reported that the POGIL exercises helped them to apply what they were learning and that they learned better by actually doing. In summary, the implementation of this book and the POGIL approach does require careful advance planning. However, instructors who would like their students to engage the material and think about the bigger picture will find Foundations in Biochemistry by Loertscher and Minderhout to be a valuable addition to their biochemistry classroom. Mark Werth is in the Department of Chemistry, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Lincoln, NE 68504; mtw@nebrwesleyan. edu. DOI: 10.1021/ed1005568 Published on Web 06/14/2010

Symmetry and Structure: Readable Group Theory for Chemists by Sidney F. A. Kettle Wiley: New York, NY, 2009. 436 pp. ISBN 978-0470060407 (paper). $75.00. reviewed by Roger Frech

The subtitle of this book, “Readable Group Theory for Chemists”, could suffice as my review, but that would give short shrift to an excellent text that deserves a far better account than that. I encountered this book last year when I taught a graduate course in molecular symmetry in chemistry. I did not select Professor Kettle's book as the course text, but instead added it to my collection of reference texts. As the course went on, I would occasionally glance at sections of Kettle's book and think, “That's a nice way of looking at that system, I think I'll use that approach today”, or “umm, good illustration”. Soon I was frequently examining sections and building lectures around the material. Finally, about two-thirds of the way through the semester, I sat back and said, “[Expletive]! This is the book I should have been using as the course text!” 788


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Why is this such a good text? The introduction to fundamental concepts of group theory is clearly written and abundantly illustrated in Chapters 2 and 3 with carefully chosen figures, all presented using a water molecule as an example. The author first considers the symmetry elements and corresponding symmetry operations in Chapter 2, taking care to distinguish between an element and an operation. Next, he examines the effect of symmetry operations on the oxygen p orbitals, noting that although a symmetry operation brings the physical shape of the orbital back on itself, the phase of an orbital may be interchanged (or left alone). In this way, the student is first introduced to the idea of representing the effect of a symmetry operation on a basis. The effect of two sequential group operations quickly leads to the concept of a group multiplication table. From there, it is a small step to developing a character table that represents this form of “multiplication”. In the following chapter, the orthonormal properties of the rows and the columns of the character table for water are introduced, followed by a consideration of the symmetry transformations of the p orbitals chosen as a basis. This leads into the concept of symmetry-adapted combinations, a necessary prelude to a discussion of the molecular orbitals of water that then follows. An MO energy-level diagram essentially completes the discussion of the electronic structure of water. By this point in the book, the fundamentals have been carefully developed and necessary formalisms clearly and cleanly introduced. Kettle's presentation of the material flows smoothly and logically, with plenty of excellent illustrations. It has been my experience that if students do not develop an imbedded grasp of fundamentals, they will struggle with the more advanced material for the rest of the course. In Chapter 4, the author introduces reducible representations, irreducible representations, and the decomposition of the former into the latter by considering the vibrational motions of the water molecule. A brief excursion into normal modes and normal coordinates is followed by selection rules and direct product functions. With most (but by no means all!) of the basic machinery of group theory in place, Kettle then moves to a number of more complex systems, again introducing new concepts with carefully chosen illustrations. Chapter 5 works through the symmetry-based analysis of ethylene and its cousin, diborane. The comparison of the two MO energy-level diagrams nicely illustrates both similarities and differences in the results. It is here that the projection operator method is formally introduced. The student encounters degenerate irreducible representations in Chapter 6, using BrF5 as a working example. Again, the discussion is careful and thorough, and the accompanying illustrations are helpful. In the treatment of the ammonia molecule given in Chapter 7, the student first “confronts the problem of unpleasant-looking characters”, in the words of the author. The author's careful handling of this topic, again well illustrated, pulls the student back from the brink of despair. I have spent many office hours trying to rescue students from the intimidation that seems to accompany their first encounter with “unpleasant-looking characters”. The next few chapters continue to introduce new material in a wisely chosen variety of systems. Finally, after giving the reader a brief taste of the complexities introduced by electron


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spin (double groups), the author closes with two chapters devoted to the structural symmetry of crystals and the symmetry-based description of vibrational motion in crystals. This book in its entirety would require two semesters to do the material justice. However, it is easy to select material for a one-semester course. I like this book. I'll use it next time around.


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Roger Frech is in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK 73019; [email protected]. DOI: 10.1021/ed100554r Published on Web 06/17/2010


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Book Review of Clickers in Action: Increasing Student Participation in

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