Abstract:

Student response systems in some form have been here for more than two decades. From crude versions with designated “clickers” and based on MCQ questions at the beginning of the century, vendors have developed smother and smother versions. Contemporary students can sign up for a website and use their phones to answer various types of questions. Modern versions also allow for gamification and competition in the classroom as some teachers stress how the technology can be used to promote cooperation and peer learning in large classes.
This presentation will discuss four didactical models for the use of student-response technology to explore how different approaches to this technology can benefit different outcomes. Technology is often taken for granted, and its use and outcome often involve more of the same. Let’s say for example that a professor used to ask questions and let the students answer by hand-raising or ballot-cards. The same students may also answer the questions with the help of “clickers”. Despite obvious benefits, e.g. higher participation or anonymity, students are still doing the same, i.e. answering questions, and the teacher is still expected to comment on those answers.
Rich Mayer (2005) makes a distinction between technology-oriented applications and learning-oriented usage of technology. In the first case, the benefits of technology are more or less taken for granted, and using technology is a sufficient indication of progress. A learning-oriented approach, on the other hand, asks what challenges there are and how technology can contribute to solving these.
Following the growth of mass education, large classes make it hard to implement student-centered methods focused on dialogue and discussions (Nicol & Boyle 2003), and feedback on a regular base is in short supply. With the increase in student numbers, this becomes “an ever more important bottleneck” (Draper & Brown 2004: 90) in the provision of higher education. Students are alienated from their peers and cooperation and peer learning is random and scarce.
My own research over the last two decades has demonstrated how student response systems can help students achieve better learning at the same time as they build social relations with their peers and a stronger learning community within their college classes. The research also suggests how the didactical model used by the teacher is instrumental to a certain outcome. Choosing a model where the students are encouraged to discuss the questions before submitting their answers has shown to be advantageous both to learning and to the classroom environment.
The presentation will include examples from this longitudinal study that will be ready to publish in the coming year.

References:
[1] Draper, S. W., & Brown, M. I. (2004). Increasing interactivity in lectures using an electronic voting system.
[2] Journal of computer assisted learning, 20(2), 81-94.
[3] Mayer, R. E. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge Handbook of multimedia learning. Cambridge university press.
[4] Nicol, D. J., & Boyle, J. T. (2003). Peer instruction versus class-wide discussion in large classes: A comparison of two interaction methods in the wired classroom. Studies in higher education, 28(4), 457-473.

Keywords:

Student response technology Didactical models.