A cross-cohort exploratory study of a student perceptions on mobile phone-based student response system using a polling website

INTRODUCTIONTo achieve effective and efficient learning, student engagement is essential, but not easy to achieve. The lack of student engagement is often an obstacle to achieving the learning outcomes (Micheletto, 2011; Wang, Shen, Novak, & Pan, 2009). If all students give answers to quizzes or polls in class, the teachers can discover excellent ideas or misconceptions. However, when the teacher calls on volunteers to answer a question, there may not be much useful feedback to the teacher. It is because only the most confident students will volunteer to answer questions and engage in discussions. Therefore, the teacher only obtains feedback from a few students who are likely to know the correct answers.As digital technologies continue to improve and become more economically viable to students and schools, much research has been done to exploit them to increase student engagement (Jungsun & Kizildag, 2011; Liu & Chen, 2015). In particular, many researches focus on the benefits and challenges of using the SRS (Student Response System) inside the classroom. In a SRS, the teacher posts a question on the projector screen and students can send their answers to the teacher's computer using custom-built devices, called "clickers", or more recently, their own mobile phones. Then the software automatically summarises answers from students and show the results to the teacher and students. This enables the teacher in the classroom to immediately gain assess the understanding of the students so as to provide instant feedback and adjust the pace of teaching accordingly (Carnaghan, Edmonds, Lechner, & Olds, 2011; McLoone, Villing, & O'Keeffe, 2015; Monk, Campbell, & Smala, 2013; Valle & Douglass, 2014).In summary, a SRS enables the teacher to answer questions in the classroom and get immediate feedback from the students using small handheld digital devices. Figure 1 shows the a screen of an SRS used by author for this study. A detailed explanation of the mechanism of the SRS will be described in a later section.The structure of this article is as follows. Firstly, we will begin by reviewing the mechanism and advantages of the clicker-based SRS. Secondly, we will review the literature regarding the mechanism of the mobile phone-based SRS and its advantages over the traditional SRS. Thirdly, the Technology Acceptance Model, on which the survey questionnaire was based, will be described. Fourthly, we will set the scene for this study by describing the institutions in which the study was conducted. Then we will present the methodology, data and the findings of our study. Finally, we will conclude the results of this study and make some suggestions for future research.STUDENT RESPONSE SYSTEMS (SRS)In a typical SRS, students are given small, portable devices called "Clickers" (Lindquist et al., 2007). The clicker, as shown in Figure 2, has numeric keys, on which students can choose their answers to the questions posted by the teacher. Then the student answers are summarised and shown on the projector screen immediately. The mechanism of the clicker-based SRS is shown in Figure 3. The main advantage of an SRS is that it allows the teacher to quickly find out how well each student understands a subject immediately. This is because students are not afraid to answer questions as the whole class can only see the statistics of the different answers, but not who gave the answers. When the teacher gets the immediate feedback, he or she can adjust the pace of the teaching accordingly. Therefore, the SRS is more effective and efficient than traditional raise-of-hand polls in creating an engaging learning environment.However, clickers are limited to making choices in the form of numbers, and students are not willing to use them if they have to pay for the clickers (Monk et al., 2013). Due to the widespread use of mobile phones in Hong Kong, and the availability of free WIFI access on campus, and commercially available polling software, mobile phones become a viable alternative to proprietary SRS using "clickers". …

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