12 Ways to use Mobile Response Sites with Student (and Faculty) Devices in the Classroom

The approaches below are collated from the literature and also from the views of colleagues within the faculty who have used student devices as audience response systems.

  1. Class discussion – students can post ideas and questions to move discussions forward (Hoppenfeld, 2012).
  2. Small group activities –gather work and feedback from small groups as they work together, even in large lecture theatres (the 10 faculty ipads might comfortably be used instead of student devices for this).
  3. Gathering experiment or survey data – open and closed responses mean you can quickly and easily gather various data whilst the digital nature of this data means it is highly portable and easily exported to various formats (Cheung, 2008).
  4. Emotive questions and personal opinion – anonymous responses should reduce the discomfort students might feel when responding to difficult questions whilst also increasing the likelihood that they will answer honestly (Dunn, Richardson, & Mcdonald, 2012).
  5. Entry Testing – gather responses that help you and your students identify their existing knowledge levels and any gaps in that knowledge (Winnips et al, 2011).
  6. Facilitate contingent teaching – you can quickly react to the collated quantitative and qualitative (using word clouds) answers of your students.
  7. Guest speakers – students can type questions before, during and after a guest speaker session whether the speaker is in the room or delivering via Skype (Tyma, 2011).
  8. Brainstorming – students can text ideas during targeted discussions (Mandernach, 2010).
  9. Student summaries – students can periodically summarise parts of the lecture allowing the tutor to check understanding (Mandernach, 2010).
  10. Formative quizzes and exam preparation – use multiple choice questions in class (Mandernach, 2010).
  11. Concept tests – based on Mazur (2009), after answering a question allow students to discuss their answers with the student next to them. Then allow them to respond again this time giving the correct answer afterwards. (Mandernach, 2010)
  12. Backchannel – a similar approach to how twitter is frequently used during conferences, allowing discussion and questions to be asked without interrupting delivery (Winnips et al., 2011).

Cheung, S. L. (2008). Using Mobile Phone Messaging as a Response Medium in Classroom Experiments. Journal of Economic Education, 51–68.

Dunn, P. K., Richardson, A., & Mcdonald, C. (2012). International Journal of Mathematical Instructor perceptions of using a mobile-phone-based free classroom response system in first-year statistics undergraduate courses, (April 2013), 37–41.

Hoppenfeld, J. (2012). Keeping students engaged with web-based polling in the library instruction session. Library Hi Tech, 30(2), 235–252. doi:10.1108/07378831211239933

Mandernach, B. J. (2010). Embracing Texting during Class From the Last Five Years to the Last Two Semesters : An Update, 24(10).

Tyma, A. (2011). Connecting with What Is Out There!: Using Twitter in the Large Lecture. Communication Teacher, 25(3), 175–181. doi:10.1080/17404622.2011.579911

Winnips, K., Heutink, J., & Beldhuis, H. (2011). Reaction Lecture : Text Messaging to Increase Student Engagement in Large-Scale Lectures.

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