Student Response Systems
Definition
Student response systems (SRSs)—also known as personal response systems (PRSs) or clickers—are wireless devices used for interactive polling in face-to-face classes, particularly in large lecture courses. With student response systems instructors can quickly gather information about their students’ understanding (or lack thereof) of course content. Students can answer muliple-choice questions posed by the instructor (and often posted on a PowerPoint slide) using response pads the size of a TV remote. Instructors also can use the system to provide students with immediate feedback and to aggregate and display responses to the entire class in a graphical form.
Educational Uses
Student response systems promote active learning, student engagement, and collaboration in the physical classroom. Instructors can pose questions, and students answer them, by pressing a button on the response pad. Some instructors encourage students to develop a response in pairs or groups. The instructor can then display a visual representation of student responses. Some systems also enable the instructor to ask a question a second time, maybe after further group discussion or lecturing, and compare the answers to see how students responded differently to the question after further deliberation or instruction.
Specifically, SRSs can be used to
- conduct interactive polls in the classroom,
- deliver in-class quizzes,
- integrate polling into think-pair-share activities,
- obtain student feedback about lectures and other learning activities,
- facilitate class discussions, and
- gather student demographic data.
Issues
Instructors should be aware of some issues when they use this type of technology for teaching and learning.
Instructional
- The cost of response pads (clickers) is becoming more reasonable, but using student response systems could require an added cost for students.
- Crafting good questions and learning activities is the key to using student response systems in a way that is useful for students and instructors.
- When you introduce any new technology into the classroom, it is easier to start small the first semester and refine your approach for future semesters based on your experience and student feedback.
Accessibility
- Response pads with many buttons on them are typically small and could cause difficulty for persons with mobility impairments.
- Colored lights on the response pad could provide issues for persons with visual impairments.
Technical
- Batteries can and do run out. It might be useful to bring extra batteries to class.
- Response pads can break easily if dropped. It might be useful to have a few extra available for students.
- The complexity of the software packages used with student response systems varies greatly; some emphasize ease-of-use and others offer more features. Be sure to give yourself time to get familiar with each one you use. Contact your local technical support staff for assistance.
Examples
See the following for examples of how others are using this type of technology to enhance learning.
Students Talk Back in the Lecture Hall
This article discusses how Donald Lui, a professor of applied economics, uses student response systems to achieve more student participation in his classes.
Resources
The following sources may help you use and teach with this type of technology.
Clickers
TurningPoint is the standardized student response system supported at The Ohio State University. This site includes information about how to set up the necessary devices and software and links to other resources. Of particular use is the information under the "In Practice" tab, which includes ideas about how to use clickers in specific disciplines, classroom implementation tips, and question design suggestions.
Mazur Group: Education
Eric Mazur, a physics professor at Harvard University, devotes part of his time to education research and finding ways to improve science education. He has used student response systems in his courses. The Mazur Group Web site includes resources for instructors interested in using student response systems to more actively engage students.
Student Response Systems (SRS): The UW-System Clicker Project
Four campuses in the University of Wisconsin system received funding to assess uses of student response systems. This Web site was created to support and publicize the project, and includes information about best practices, examples of uses, guides and manuals, and research articles.
7 Things You Should Know About... Clickers (PDF)
ELI (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative) publishes a “7 Things You Should Know About…” series of brief overviews of emerging technologies and their educational uses. This one includes information about what SRSs are, who is using them, why this is significant, and the implications for teaching and learning.
Research
The following research literature has been published about the educational uses of this type of technology.
Crouch, C. H., and Eric Mazur. “Peer Instruction: Ten Years of Experience and Results.” American Journal of Physics 69 (2001): 970–977.
This compelling paper reports on data from 10 years of teaching with “peer instruction,” a collaborative learning technique that centers around ConcepTests, conceptual questions that are designed to expose common difficulties in understanding concepts that inform course material. Teaching strategies include pre-class preparation, in-class conceptual probes, student response, peer-to-peer discussion, revised responses, and feedback. Peer instruction is amenable to implementation via student response systems. Research results show substantial, statistically significant learning gains as a result of the use of peer instruction.
Draper, S. W., and M. I. Brown. “Increased Interactivity in Lectures Using an Electronic Voting System.” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 20 (2004): 81–94.
Draper, S. W., J. Cargill, and Q. Cutts. “Electronically Enhanced Classroom Interaction.” Australian Journal Of Educational Technology 18, no.1 (2002): 13–23.
Both articles provide a theoretical rationale for using student response systems in the classroom and describe a number of different techniques for using them. The first article also presents the results of evaluation efforts over two years and includes a number of possible survey questions to be used in the evaluation of student response systems.
Dufresne, Robert J., William J. Gerace, William J. Leonard, Jose P. Mestre, and Laura Wenk. “Classtalk: A Classroom Communication System for Active Learning.” Journal of Computing in Higher Education 7, no. 2 (1996): 3–47. http://www.bedu.com/Publications/UMASS.pdf.
This informative paper describes how a student response system was used in moderately large physics courses over two years. The theoretical motivation for using student response systems in science learning is described thoroughly. The authors sought a more active form of engagement in their classes to overcome student preconceptions and misconceptions; help students create the principle- and concept-based knowledge structures that characterize experts; and motivate their students. Their student response sequence begins with question presentation and then moves to cooperative group work, answer collection, and finally, class-wide discussion.
The article is most valuable for its detailed description of the authors’ questioning procedure. They focused on conceptual, rather than computational, questions that often were posed before a relevant presentation or demonstration. Moreover, they organized questions to build on each other and on previously learned material. They spent substantial time on the group work and whole-class discussion. As a result the instructors reduced the time spent presenting material to about a third of the class period. This approach is different from that developed by Mazur’s group.
Judson, E., and D. Sawada. “Learning from the Past and Present: Electronic Response Systems in College Lecture Halls.” Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching 21, no. 2 (2002): 167–181.
Through an extensive review of student response systems literature, the authors discover that students will favor the use of electronic response systems no matter the nature of the underlying pedagogy. However, the key to students’ success is to take a constructivist approach to teaching with the systems; according to the literature, a behaviorist approach did not result in academic achievement. In other words, learning activities that integrate student response systems should actively engage students.
