Book Description
Audience response systems, student response technology, or simply "clickers" are products designed for teachers to efficiently collect multiple-choice answers from numerous students simultaneously. In large lecture halls, class response systems enable interaction where it previously would not have been feasible. In the classroom, response systems facilitate a shift from the teacher calling on 1 student to the teacher receiving responses from every student. Studies have found mixed results ranging from class response systems improving students' academic performance through the course of a unit to the occasional case of detrimental effects on students' grades compared with control groups without class response systems. These studies have explored the use of class response systems in a variety of academic subjects, comparing varying demographics including gender and varying student needs including students with anxiety or shyness. This study measured the effect of using class response systems in a secondary science classroom for 1 unit to explore whether or not the use of class response systems would have a measurable impact on students' gain scores between the pretest and the posttest for that unit. The results based on comparison of gain scores between experimental and control groups indicate that the use of class response systems does not demonstrate an effect on student learning. Keywords: clickers, engagement, learning