Improving Student Learning Experience by the Full Integration of Classroom Response Systems into Lectures

Classroom response systems are widely recognized as an effective way to engage and motivate students, improve knowledge retention, and provide formative feedback opportunities for both students and educators, and as such present an excellent opportunity to improve the student classroom experience. Unfortunately, there remain concerns in the pedagogical research community that the use of classroom response systems can distract, confuse, or intimidate students. The authors believe that these concerns can be mitigated by fully integrating classroom response system technologies into the classroom, such that the systems become an integral part of the lecture experience and not simply a intermittent supplementary activity. To fully integrate classroom response systems into a course, it is necessary for educators to unlock the full potential of classroom response systems. Over the past several years, the authors were able to achieve this full integration and gather data from almost 500 computer science students. The findings, presented in this paper, clearly indicate that students appreciate the activity and fully recognize its value as an enhancement to their learning experience, and do not, for the most part, consider these systems to be a source of distraction or confusion