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wide variety of approaches. The authors have iden-
tified ten different categories of questions (albeit not
mutually exclusive) that can each be used to design
more engaging and interactive lectures, regardless of
the classroom size, and with this paper the authors
will explore how this deep integration of CRS into the
classroom addresses many of the concerns that might
prevent other educators from doing the same.
The remainder of this paper is organized as fol-
lows. Section 2 discusses related work in the con-
text of the use of CRS. The categories of CRS que-
stions that the authors have identified are discussed
in Section 3 and an example CRS is discussed in
Section 4. Section 5 examines one of the authors’
courses (into which a CRS was integrated) and criti-
cally reflects on the student feedback that was recei-
ved. Section 6 reviews and concludes the paper.
2 RELATED WORK
Many educators first consider the inclusion of CRS
activities in their courses as opportunities to improve
student engagement, particularly in courses with very
large class sizes. This significant application notwit-
hstanding, CRS systems offer another, unique oppor-
tunity for formative feedback that can be generated
immediately, even in large populations. The feedback
provided by CRS can be used by students to discre-
tely self-assess themselves on a specific facet of a lar-
ger topic by comparing their own performance against
that of the rest of the class. Simultaneously, the in-
structor can review the performance of all participants
and assess how well the corresponding material has
been understood by the class, adjusting the pace of
the lecture to match the immediate learning needs of
the participants.
The effectiveness of CRS in delivering these in-
valuable opportunities is supported by several exten-
sive studies (Boscardin and Penuel, 2012; Moss and
Crowley, 2011; Kay and LeSage, 2009; Bruff, 2009;
Moredich and Moore, 2007), and nearly all of the sur-
veyed literature supports the claim that participants
are satisfied with the CRS activities themselves. That
said, on more than one occasion (Blasco-Arcas et al.,
2013; Webb and Carnaghan, 2006), it has been sugge-
sted that benefits attributed to CRS by these research
studies might simply be the result of improving inte-
ractivity in the classroom. Nevertheless, since CRS
represent an interactive activity that can be used with
a class of virtually any size, it is not unreasonable to
state that this application of CRS is almost universally
accepted. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that
CRS activity performance is a good predictor of over-
all performance (Porter et al., 2014), and that, with
no additional effort, CRS can be used to identify par-
ticipants that might be struggling (Liao et al., 2016).
Others (Porter and Simon, 2013; Simon et al., 2010)
also indicated that they used CRS as one of their best
practices for student retention.
The effective use of CRS has been shown to bene-
fit student performance as well. Simon et al. (2013)
contrasted the performance of students instructed tra-
ditionally against a peer-instructed offering, finding
that the peer-instructed subjects (that made extensive
use of CRS) outperformed those who were instructed
in a more traditional manner. Similarly, Steven Huss-
Lederman (2016) reported on a 2-year experiment in
which first-year students showed better learning gains
as a result of using a CRS. More recently, Collier
and Kawash (2017) presented quantitative evidence
that CRS questions can be structured and presented
in such a way as to improve a participants ability to
retain content, by allowing students to revisit content
that has already passed from short-term memory.
In contrast with these results, some studies have
suggested that the inclusion of CRS activities may not
yield any benefits and could in fact actually create a
barrier for some students. Robert Vinaja presented
(2014) the results of an experiment where the use of
a CRS (alongside recorded lectures, videos, and ot-
her electronic materials) did not result in a perfor-
mance improvement. In a broader criticism of in-
class discussion in general, Kay and Lesage (2009)
discussed how exposure to differing perspectives (that
could potentially arise during the discussion follo-
wing a CRS question) might cause confusion. Simi-
larly, Draper and Brown (2004) suggested that CRS
activities might distract students from their actual le-
arning outcomes.
Although those findings are not consistent with
the authors’ own experiences, CRS do require an in-
vestment (with respect to both lecture time and prepa-
ration time) and the concern that the activity might be
confusing or distracting cannot be summarily dismis-
sed. Nevertheless, the authors believe that the con-
cerns about CRS activities being disruptive or confu-
sing can be addressed by an integrated approach. The
authors conjecture that, when a CRS is carefully in-
tegrated into the classroom flow (as opposed to being
treated as a novel but disjoint activity) these potential
barriers will no longer exist.
On the Use of Classroom Response Systems as an Integral Part of the Classroom
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