When things click in the lecture hall

Abstract

Student-response systems (SRS) are interactive technology that can be used to ask questions, collect answers—from each student "clicking" on an alternative—and displaying the distribution of answers on a screen in real time.

In this article we explain how and to what extent we have had success with an extensive usage of SRS technology in mathematics teaching for first-semester engineering students.

How, by presenting some principles of a possible best practice for the use of SRS technology in general, and our own attempts at complying with these.

To what extent, by presenting results from two surveys (N=594 og N=530). These show, first and foremost, that the students are largely positive to our use of SRS: They report that the technology helps them learn, and they clearly prefer to "click" during lectures if the alternative is more direct presentation from the instructor.

The surveys moreover indicate some positive effects which we had not anticipated: The use of SRS turns out to have an effect both on the students' relationships to each other and on their motivation for turning up to lectures at all.

The two surveys and a repository of questions for teaching with SRS (in Norwegian) are uploaded as attachments to the manuscript.