We investigate a personal response system (PRS) pedagogy for lecture halls that encourages active engagement yet lowers barriers for implementation by eliminating the need to address student requests to make up questions because students must answer (not necessarily correctly) only more than half (greater than or equal 50%) of PRS questions to…

Teacher educators' distinct and dual task of educating future teachers includes using digital tools to support students' ongoing learning while exemplifying appropriate teaching strategies where the use of digital tools, such as response systems (RSs), are commonly occurring. RSs have been used in higher education for a long time, and many studies…

Socrative is an online platform that allows a teacher to put questions to students through an app on their smart phone or tablet. In existence since 2011, its use is now quite common in university teaching. But is Socrative any good? This article reviews the literature on the device and discusses my research on the use of the app, the first…

Student Response System (SRS) allows all students to have a chance to participate in the classroom with their own devices. While it is an effective tool for promoting active participation and classroom interaction, previous studies argue that overuse and over-dependence of the technology can pose a problem of student disengagement. This paper…

The affordances and pedagogical benefits of technology in the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classrooms are widely acknowledged. One potential use of technology is in eliciting and managing students' responses, which is an area where EAP/ESP teachers often report difficulties. Traditionally, teachers…

Student engagement refers to the behaviors that suggest whether a student is interested in the learning process. Finn (1989) developed the participation-identification model to explain the correlation between student engagement and identification with school, suggesting that increased participation leads to an increased sense of belongingness in…

Background: Over the past decade, the prevalence of anxiety has increased among college-aged students and college counseling centers have become increasingly concerned about the negative impact of anxiety on students. While college in general can be stressful, college science classrooms have the potential to be especially anxiety-inducing because…

Clickers as electronic response systems allow students to respond instantly to questions. The aim of this study is to compare the effects of using clickers on student participation during different periods of EFL courses. The intervention was implemented in question-response sessions of an EFL course at a secondary school. A quasi-experimental…

E-learning applications have been rapidly adopted by instructors inside and outside of the classroom. As a result, some researchers have started to assess their usefulness applying uses and gratifications (U&G) theory. This study expands the existing research trend exploring students' motivation to use a mobile polling application in the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of two student response methods within selected college lecture halls. Kinesiology majors from three universities were asked to respond to questions during two consecutive lectures, one using "clickers" and the other using hand-raising. Participation and comprehension rates were…

Flipped classes are well-known for reversing the typical in-class lecture and out-of-class homework structure by instructing students to learn by themselves from on-line learning materials and inviting them to ask questions based on their individual difficulties in class. Many attempts at integrating this teaching method into English as a foreign…

This work addresses the use of tablets and smartphones to enhance both student learning and engagement. Tablets were tested as potential substitutes for digital whiteboards, while smartphones were tested as potential survey media in the classroom using a question and answer method. Two teaching strategies were evaluated and compared: (1)…

Vision and Change states that one of the major changes in the way we design biology courses should be a switch in approach from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning and identifies active learning as a recommended methods. Studies show performance benefits for students taking courses that use active learning. What is unknown is…

Student engagement is critical to academic success. High-Active Student Response (ASR) teaching techniques are an effective way to improve student engagement and are an important component of evidence-based practice. High-ASR teaching strategies accompany important assumptions: (1) ASR is an alterable variable; (2) teachers can increase ASR in…

Using technology to enhance the classroom environment can have a tremendous impact on student learning, as well as on an instructor's teaching. This paper describes one instructor's transition from traditional chalkboard lectures to a fully technological presentation of content. After carefully reviewing the literature, clicker technology was…