Empowering or compelling reluctant participators using audience response systems

Abstract

This article investigates the impact of an audience response system (ARS) on student engagement in undergraduate university courses. A survey was administered to students in a dozen courses piloting the ARS system. On 13 out of 14 measures the majority of students thought the system was helpful. Overall, students were more positive about the use of the ARS in courses that used the tool for formative feedback (empowering) rather than for grading or attendance purposes (compelling). The authors discuss the positive impact of the ARS on the engagement of `reluctant participators' or students who reported that they are least likely to participate in class under normal conditions. Reluctant participators' perceptions of the helpfulness of the ARS were compared to those of non-reluctant participators. Finally, student comments were analyzed to determine why students with the most negative feelings about the ARS felt the way they did and which teaching practices using the ARS were perceived to have the greatest value by the students.

Evaluation of a Smartphone-based Student Response System for Providing High Quality Real-time Responses in a Distributed Classroom

“…Most of the students stated that they liked the fact that responses were anonymous, expressing that they were no longer afraid of giving wrong answers, clearly supporting the research findings in [11].…”

“…1 The literature clearly illustr pedagogical benefits and education response systems including im learning, increased student inter student preparation for classes, attendance, increased student sat creation of an enjoyable learning 10]. In addition, SRSs can be assessment and obtaining ano feedback [7,11].…”

Teaching with student response systems (SRS): teacher-centric aspects that can negatively affect students’ experience of using SRS

“…Some publications also report on teaching aspects of SRS that have been shown to decrease students' satisfaction with the system. These include inefficient use of time with SRS (Knight and Wood 2005;Reay, Li, and Bao 2008) by, for example, using too much time setting up the system and handing out clickers (Draper and Brown 2004;Masikunas, Panayiotidis, and Burke 2007) or having discussions drag on for too long (Dufrense et al 1996); responses from SRS being graded (Knight and Wood 2005;Reay, Li, and Bao 2008); grading of SRS questions resulting in mandatory attendance (Graham et al 2007); SRS being used only to keep attendance (University of Wisconsin 2012); SRS being used just for the sake of using it (Draper 2002); teachers having negative attitudes towards SRS (Draper 2002); irrelevant clicker questions (Barnett 2006); and lack of teacher explanation after the quiz (Smith et al 2011).…”

On the Effect of Online Peer Knowledge Sharing on Iranian EFL Teachers' Professional Development

“…Teachers may refuse to employ technology because of two reasons: they might not be aware of the ease in which technology can be employed to facilitate learning, and they may not be aware of the fact that technology offers a much easier method of designing curriculum, planning lessons, galvanizing students and tracking students' achievement. Therefore, the ways to incorporate technology should be shared with instructors and instruction should be offered if necessary (Graham, Tripp & Wentworth 2009). …”