The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of audience response systems on the secondary classroom. High school students (n=61) participated in one of three groups: (1) a control group, which heard traditional lectures with verbal questions only, (2) a clicker group, which had questions displayed and used clickers to answer, and (3) a questions only group, which had questions displayed but used slips of paper to answer the question. ANOVA was used to analyze various sources of data, including: test scores, post-test scores, and others, and it was found that there was no statistical difference between the control and two treatment groups. A focus group (n=4) was held to gather qualitative data. Students in the focus group indicated that they enjoyed using clickers for various reasons. Focus group participants indicated that clickers allowed for increased interaction between students and teacher and between students, the graphs allowed students to understand how they performed compared to the class, and gave opportunities for competition. More data needs to be collected on the use of clickers and how the discussion they foster might lead to increased learning. / text

In recent years, the adoption of digital learning environments has been proven as a suitable complement to traditional lectures, allowing to involve students more actively. However, current approaches lack at supporting both lecturers' individual teaching scenarios and collaborative activities. Thus, this thesis introduces an adaptable collaborative learning environment that enables lecturers to model and execute customized teaching scenarios. In addition to expressive means of adaptation, it includes collaborative functions which support group and peer interactions. The approach was implemented in a role-based prototype called scenario-tailored Audience Response System (stARS), demonstrating its applicability through seven well-known teaching scenarios. Furthermore, a thorough evaluation based on various user studies and lecture experiments confirmed the ability to support lecturers' individual teaching scenarios and integrate advanced collaborative activities into digital learning environments.

The integration of technology into STEM education has been shown to increase classroom interaction and thus has the potential to improve student's learning. However, current approaches are designed to support specific scenarios and therefore have predefined functional scopes and limitations. This results in lecturers having to adjust their preferred teaching strategy to the currently used system. Hence, our goal is to allow lecturers to customize the system's functionality to their strategy in mind. As a solution, we created a prototype called stARS (scenario-tailored Audience Response System) that builds on top of a uniform metamodel and allows lecturers to create customized teaching scenarios using a graphical editor. First user studies have confirmed that users with different modeling abilities are able to understand the metamodel and use the graphical editor. In order to demonstrate the intuitive use of our prototype, this paper presents concepts to support both the starting phase and modeling of complex scenarios. However, an implementation in real-life scenarios has to be conducted to show its applicability.

Instructional technologies can be effective tools to foster student engagement, but university faculty may be reluctant to integrate innovative and evidence-based modern learning technologies into instruction. It is important to identify the factors that influence faculty adoption of instructional technologies in the teaching and learning process. Based on Rogers' diffusion of innovation theory, this quantitative, nonexperimental, one-shot cross-sectional survey determined what attributes of innovation (relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability) predict the probability of faculty adopting the audience response system (ARS) into instruction. The sample for the study consisted of 201 faculty who have current teaching appointments at a university in the southeastern United States. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to determine the attributes of innovation that predict the probability of faculty adopting the ARS into instruction. The data indicated that the attributes of compatibility and trialability significantly predicted faculty adoption of ARS into instruction. Based on the results of the study, a professional development project that includes 3 full days of training and experiential learning was designed to assist faculty in adopting ARS into instruction. Because the current study only included the faculty at a single local university, future studies are recommended to explore a more holistic view of the problem from different institutions and from other stakeholders who may contribute to the process of instructional technology adoption. The project not only contributes to solving the local problem in ARS adoption, but it is also instrumental in promoting positive social change by fostering evidence-based teaching strategies and innovations that maximize student learning.

Feedback plays an important role in evaluating and developing courses in higher education. Due to inefficient factors, the feedback cycle does not meet its full potential and can therefore be counterproductive. Current evaluation methods typically demand much effort from both students and teachers, when asking for feedback at the end of the course and analyzing the results. Lack of engagement can thus be observed in both parties. Moreover, we can see an increasing trend of ARS used in educational settings, to improve learning quality and enhance the relationship between the presenter and audience. This study’s aim was to make the feedback process more efficient and to explore how to provide insight in lecture quality for continuous course development. To fully understand the target user, a pre-study was conducted to identify design requirements and to investigate which areas to evaluate during the courses and why. The interview sessions resulted in four main dimensions to evaluate; Meaningfulness, comprehension, knowledge and attitude. Based on these dimensions, a feedback tool was developed to gather the feedback data from students in two different cohorts. The tool was developed in a survey format, with the help of an existing ARS. The feedback was then collected after two university lectures during two courses. To explore the potential of providing useful insight to the lecturer, and to facilitate the analytical step of the process, an interactive visualization tool was prototyped to display the data. The visualization tool was evaluated, both in terms of usability and its overall concept, with a total of eight lecturers, two of which were lecturers in the courses used to gather the feedback data. Even though the results show that it might be difficult to draw a single conclusion of the tools’ usability, the users found the concept interesting and were positive towards the idea. The perception of the tool’s intended use varied and is discussed along with future development. / Feedback spelar en viktig roll när det kommer till utvärdering och utveckling av kurser inom högre utbildning. På grund av ineffektiva faktorer uppnår feedbackcykeln inte sin fulla potential och kan därför vara kontraproduktiv. Aktuella utvärderingsmetoder kräver typiskt mycket ansträngning från både elever och lärare och brist på engagemang kan således observeras hos båda parter. Dessutom kan vi se en ökande trend av ARS som används i utbildningsinstitutioner, för att förbättra utbildningskvaliteten samt förhållandet mellan presentatören och publiken. Syftet med studien var att göra feedbackprocessen mer effektiv och undersöka hur man kan ge insikt i föreläsningskvaliteten för kontinuerlig kursutveckling. För att förstå slutanvändaren genomfördes en förundersökning för att identifiera deras begär och för att undersöka vilka områden som ska utvärderas under kurserna och varför. Intervjuerna resulterade i fyra huvuddimensioner att utvärdera och ge insikt inom; Betydelse, förståelse, kunskap och attityd. Baserat på dessa dimensioner utvecklades ett feedbackverktyg. Verktyget var i form av ett formulär och producerades med hjälp av ett befintlig ARS. Feedbackdatan samlades sedan in efter två universitetsföreläsningar under två kurser. För att undersöka möjligheten att ge föreläsaren användbar insikt och för att underlätta det analytiska steget i processen, utvecklades ett interaktivt visualiseringsverktyg. Visualiseringsverktyget utvärderades, både vad gäller användbarhet och dess övergripande koncept, med totalt åtta föreläsare. Även om resultaten visar att det kan vara svårt att dra en enda slutsats av verktygets användbarhet, fann användarna konceptet intressant och var överlag positiva. Uppfattningen av verktygets avsedda användning varierar och diskuteras tillsammans med framtida utveckling.

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Higher education is still mainly based on traditional face-to-face teaching formats such as lectures. Although known for a long time, the demand for alternative lecture designs has only recently grown significantly due to the present pandemic crisis, which requires a physical separation between the students and also the lecturer. This separation results in challenges of its own: While most solutions already allow the lecture to be held via streaming, it is even more challenging to involve students, or to create interactions with them or between them. Some approaches allow to activate students through simple polls, chats, or collaboration in breakout sessions. However, either the functional scope of these activities is severely limited or they are restricted to small scenarios. The contents of this paper have been under investigation for some time, but in lieu of the current CoViD-19 pandemic, the authors have decided to apply their preliminary findings in actual lectures and present the results here. The main goal is to investigate the addition of more advanced activities that can be adapted to the current scenario. Therefore, an approach is presented that enables lecturers to create custom workflows of interactive activities such as several types of polls, question and answer, instant feedback, or group formations with corresponding interactions. The application in real scenarios is currently being investigated.

Technology is enjoying an increasingly important role in many collegiate pedagogical designs. Contemporary research has become more focused on the ways that technology can contribute to learning outcomes. These studies provide a critical foundation for educational researchers who seek to incorporate and reap the benefits of new technologies in classroom environments. The aim of the present study is to empirically assess how combining an active, collaborative learning environment with a classroom response system (colloquially called “clickers”) in a postsecondary setting can influence and improve learning outcomes. To this end, the study proposes an instructional design utilizing two feedback response-formats (clickers and flashcards) and two response methods for answering in-class questions (collaborative peer instruction and individual). The theoretical bases that provide the academic structure for the five instructional conditions (control, clicker-response individual, clicker-response peer instruction, flashcard-response individual, and flashcard-response peer instruction) are the generative learning theory and social constructivism. Participants were 171 undergraduate students from an Educational Psychology subject pool from a large Southwest university. The researcher used a two-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with two treatments (response format and collaboration level) as the between-subjects factors; students’ posttest scores as the dependent variable; and pretest scores as the covariate. Results showed no significant main effects; however, the study produced statistically significant findings that there was an interaction effect between the use of clickers and a peer instruction design. To follow up the interaction, the researcher conducted tests of the simple effects of response format within each collaboration condition, with the pretest as the covariate. Results showed that for students who collaborated, clickers were better than flashcards, whereas when students worked individually, there was no difference. This study builds upon existing studies by using a stronger empirical approach with more robust controls to evaluate the effects of a variety of instructional interventions, clicker and flashcard response systems and peer instruction on learning outcomes. It shows that clicker technology might be most effective when combined with collaborative methods. The discussion includes implications, limitations, and directions for future research. / text

In higher education we are confronted with a number of challenges. This includes an increasing diversity of students with respect to their basic knowledge, motivation and learning skills. To overcome these challenges, we changed the instructional strategy from traditional lectures towards a more seminar-like format that actively engages students. In this article, we will reflect on difficulties that arose when implementing a voting system in a first-semester business mathematics course. We will give an insight into how we redesigned the traditional lecture in order to successfully launch this instructional strategy. In particular, we will show the extent of the benefit gained by combining an audience response system with a peer-instruction phase.

Humans’ emotions have the ability to take over, which might end up with responses inappropriate to the situation. The solution to inappropriate responses is to have a better awareness. Great team-work, calm employees, and rational decision making are all qualities that derive benefit from emotional self-awareness. However, studies show that only 36 percent can identify their emotions as they happen. This paper takes on the opportunity to raise emotional self-awareness by designing a prototype that enables the users to reflect and anonymously share their emotion through an audience response system. Forty-eight participants, in various group sizes, did within-subjects tests. They started by writing down their answer to the question: How do you feel?. They later answered through the prototype. Whether or not the participants managed to be more specific through the prototype was measured, as well as their perceived anonymity. The results revealed that the prototype was useful in both helping the users to learn emotion definitions and further specify their emotion. In regards to the perceived anonymity, it showed that the design was favoring a larger group size around 20 participants.