Globally, online (or e-learning) environments are growing in popularity in schools and universities. However, the language of instruction in these environments is mostly English. This is a problem as most of the students enrolling into online learning environments in South Africa are non-native English speakers. For these students, English is…

Positive student-instructor relationships are important for student engagement, motivation, retention and achievement. Yet, as class sizes grow, these relationships can be increasingly difficult to develop. This study explores LectureTools--a web-based student response and learning platform that facilitates communication between instructors and…

This article reports on an action-research project designed to investigate the effect of a technological intervention on the complex interactions between student engagement, participation, attendance and preparation in a large lecture delivered as part of a compulsory first-year law course, a discipline which has not been the focus of any previous…

In this article, we describe and discuss the most significant teacher-centric aspects of student response systems (SRS) that we have found to negatively affect students' experience of using SRS in lecture settings. By doing so, we hope to increase teachers' awareness of how they use SRS and how seemingly trivial choices or aspects when using SRS…