Effectively using classroom response systems for improving student content retention

Classroom response systems are widely recognized as an effective tool for providing formative feedback and engaging students, but our research supports the hypothesis that these systems also provide opportunities for improving content retention. This is evidenced by an experiment we conducted on two distinct sections of an introductory course in computer science, wherein large collections of classroom response system questions were presented to different sections at different stages. Questions that were offered immediately after the corresponding material had the express purpose of providing an opportunity for formative feedback, while questions that were presented later were expected to improve content retention. The performance of participants on the corresponding questions of the final examination was then reviewed, and statistical analyses indicate that participants performed better on those questions that corresponded to the classroom response system questions provided for content retention