Enhancing Check-Reinforce Introduction With a Class Response System: The C2RI Method - A Five-Year Study

Abstract

Some lecturers start their sessions by reviewing or summarizing the main contents covered in the previous session. In general, this review involves the teacher exposing the main concepts and, in some cases, asking about them. This approach, which could be called Check-Reinforce Introduction (CRI), might be seen as having one main drawback; namely, the restricted feedback that lecturers may receive from students due to shyness. Bearing in mind this limitation, we have created what we have called the Classroom Response System CRI (C2RI), which takes advantage of a smartphone-based Classroom Response System (CRS) to obtain more feedback from students during the CRI. We conducted a five-year study on teaching related to technological issues in order to obtain empirical data on whether students consider the use of CRI useful. This is, to our knowledge, the first study involving empirical quantitative data. For this purpose, during the study, we applied the new method (C2RI) to assess whether students prefer C2RI or CRI and whether students' level of attention, motivation, and performance improved or not. Our findings show that the majority of students consider both methods useful, but the scores are higher in C2RI and they perceive higher level of attention with this method. We have also discovered that their motivation to study between lectures decreased using C2RI, which correlates with a slight decrease in student performance on exams, concluding that this method has to be designed in a way that does not create a false sense of confidence in the students.

Classroom Response System in a Super-Blended Learning and Teaching Model: Individual or Team-Based Learning?

“…For example, Goh and Ong reported that Malaysian pharmacy students with previous poor academic performance benefited from FC, which proved to improve student pass rate significantly [ 60 ]. In addition, CRS provides a technology-enabled learning environment for enhancing interactivity in classroom by collecting, aggregating, and displaying students’ responses [ 29 , 31 ].…”

“…Therefore, most of them face rocky transition and more challenges than home students when starting their higher education due to cultural and language barriers in learning as well as engagement and interaction difficulties. As such, we hybridised FC model with CRS, in which class performance (individually/ in teams) can be collected and monitored while ongoing feedback were provided during in-class formative assessments [ 28 , 29 ].…”

“…It is well documented that CRS can improve student cognition, data retention and academic performance by encouraging engagement with course content, educators, and peers as well as improving in-class attention and concentration, since in most cases learners are expected to be prepared and answer live questions [ 27 , 28 , 29 ]. Moreover, engaged students make conscious decisions to apply their knowledge, skills, and resources to improve their understanding and learning [ 26 ].…”

“…Therefore, CRS can be also an ideal approach to deliver revision sessions where students work together to answer questions. CRS immediate student feedback system also benefits the instructors to sample learners’ opinion, examine their understanding and learning to adjust the course structure and the teaching mode [ 29 ]. The most significant challenges for student include adjusting to a new learning style and remaining focused when multiple perspectives are discussed.…”