Debbie's Weblog

A classroom response system (CRS) is a set of hardware and software that facilitates teaching different activities such as for example, a teacher poses a multiple-choice question on the overhead, each student submits their answer using a clicker that beams an infrared or radio-frequency signal to a receiver attached to the teacher?s computer, then the software on the teacher?s computer collects the student?s answers and produces a histogram showing how many students chose each of the answer choices.

The articles showed that some teachers use CRS to maintain students? attention, to promote active student engagement during a lecture, to promote discussion and collaboration among students during class with group exercises that require students to discuss and come to a consensus, to encourage participation from each and every student in a class, to create a safe space for shy and unsure students to participate in class, to check for student understanding during class, to teach in a way that adapts to the immediate learning needs of the students, to take attendance quickly and to add a little drama to class.

As a foreign language teacher, I am not sure if I am a ?fan? of CRS; however, I can see that when I ask a question and I call on the first student to raise his or her hand, can result in one student participating, thus a CRS activity can help to involve all of the students in the class.  Also, a CRS system can give shy students the chance to respond silently and privately, enabling the student who might not speak up in class to express their thoughts and opinions.  It can also enable students to respond anonymously to sensitive, ethical, legal and moral questions.

Some activities that I could incorporate in my classes using CRS would be a review game similar to ?Jeopardy,? peer instruction (I can pose a question and wait for responses, if not satisfy with answers, I can ask the students to collaborate with each other), quizzes (great way to save paper!), interactive demonstrations and data gathering (opinion polls, likes, dislikes).

However, technology brings a share of problems as well.  A teacher needs considerable amount of time to set-up and troubleshoot the CRS.  Also, non-CRS back-up activities need to be planned.  Also, writing effective multiple-choice questions can be challenging.  Common student mistakes and misconceptions can be useful in designing wrong answers to multiple-choice questions.  Another problem that I can see is if many students choose the wrong answer to a specific question may reveal that the students have misconceptions, although not necessarily bad, teachers may need to expend extra time to figure out why the students chose the wrong answer and clarify the problem.  Finally, if the students do not understand a particular concept, the teacher may need to change the plan quickly and this can be challenging for teachers who do not think on their feet.