CASE STUDY EXPLORING THE USE OF STUDENT RESPONSE SYSTEMS IN STEM-BASED SECONDARY SCHOOL CLASSROOMS

Student response systems (SRSs), also known as audience response systems, classroom response systems and clickers, allow students to answer electronically displayed questions. SRSs can be hardware (e.g., physical device) or software-based (e.g., mobile apps). Typically, all responses are instantly presented, in chart form, then reviewed and discussed by the instructor and the class. Considerable research has been conducted on the use of SRSs in higher education [1-8] but not in secondary school environments. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of SRSs in STEM-based secondary school classrooms. Twenty-two STEM-focused secondary school teachers with 1 to 32 years of teaching experience participated in this study. After four months of integrating SRSs in their classrooms, all teachers completed a survey, responded to open-ended questions, and participated in hour-long focus groups. Key benefits of using SRSs included providing formative feedback on learning and teaching, increasing student involvement, improving the quality of teaching, and offering an alternative method for conducting summative assessments. Key challenges observed were technical problems (software and hardware), increased preparation time for lessons, accounting for individual differences, resistance to summative assessment, and classroom management.