On the effects of different parameters in classroom interactivity systems on students

Classroom Response Systems (CRS) are often used in higher education lectures. They help to activate students and to get a deeper insight on the students' knowledge base and on their opinion on currently discussed topics. Many different systems were created, offering a similar amount of functionality. We thus investigate what the important parameters of such systems are, and how they influence the students’ behavior. Therefore, we consider classic response systems as well as systems with a higher amount of interactivity. In a first step, we have defined eight possible parameters, like the usage of pictures or a progress bar. We did a field study in thirty six lectures comparing the impact of the different parameters. As expected, the overall satisfaction with CRS is very high but we have obtained surprising results with particular parameters. We present the most interesting results and give a suggestion on which parameters are useful for an investigation in greater depth.

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