Abstract:

Research has indicated that using interactive response system (IRS) has the potential to facilitate students’ and teachers’ interaction, to increase course attendance, and to improve vivid learning atmosphere. However, previous studies on IRS have adopted the lecture method or have focused on comparing the learning performance with or without using the IRS applications in the course. While, few have made efforts to investigate the learning effects of instructional methods and IRS activities on learning and teaching. Hence, in this study, the researcher aimed to integrate IRS applications with two teaching and learning methods, learner-as-leader strategy and teacher-as-leader strategy, and to explore whether the use of IRS application with various strategies have different learning impacts on students. The experiment was conducted for a semester (15 weeks), and a total of 88 undergraduate students from a college in Taiwan participated in this study and were divided into two groups. In the experimental group (E.G.), the teacher conducted the course through learner-as-leader strategy with IRS activity in which the learners were asked to play the role of leaders by taking turns hosting the IRS activities. For the control groups (C.G.), the teacher-as-leader strategy was adopted. The instructor was the only leader in the IRS activity, and the learners played the role of passive participants in the activity. The researcher used questionnaires to collect how the learners perceived integrating the IRS activity with the different teaching and learning strategies. The results indicated that students had positive attitude toward using the IRS activity into the course, and the longer the students participated in the IRS activity, the more positive feedback they gave. The researcher also found that using various teaching strategies might have different learning impact on learners. The learner-to-leader strategy with IRS activity had higher questionnaire average scores of question items regarding the perceptions of integrating the IRS into course and perceptions of learning interaction with peers. What’s more, it was found that participation in the IRS activity was a trigger that motivated the learners to engage in self-learning and self-reflection. The integration of the learner-as-leader strategy into IRS activity could arouse students to do the preview work before the course. Suggestions and future work are also discussed in the end of the paper.

Keywords:

e-learning, Interactive response system (IRS), Teaching and learning strategies.