Teaching with student response systems (SRS): teacher-centric aspects that can negatively affect students’ experience of using SRS

Abstract

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 can have a significant negative impact on students’ experiences, especially when these aspects are often repeated. We cover areas such as consistency when using SRS, time usage, preparation, the experience level of the teachers with regard to SRS, teacher commitment and attitudes, teacher explanations, and how students fear that voting results can mislead the teacher. The data are based on 3 years of experience in developing and using an online SRS in classroom lectures, and they consist of focused (semistructured) student group interviews, student surveys and personal observations.Keywords: audience response systems; clickers; student attitudes; teaching pitfalls(Published: 11 June 2013)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2013, 21: 18989 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.18989