A study on the influence of rich versus traditional classroom response system (CRS) questions on concept retention

Clickers in classrooms have been shown to increase student engagement. With the emergence of touch-based smart devices, such as iPhones and iPads, there is a move towards migrating the functionality offered by the clickers to these advanced response systems. Apart from being a convenient alternative, do these advanced touch-based devices offer anything new with respect to student learning? For a start, beyond the traditional multiple-choice and true/false responses, these advanced clickers provide several new question modalities that the traditional button-based clickers do not offer. It can be hypothesized that the rich interactions offered by touch-based devices can enhance student engagement even further than the traditional clickers currently do and contribute towards improvements in student learning. To explore this hypothesis, a study was designed to investigate the difference in concept retention among students who use the traditional versus rich classroom response systems (CRS). The study was conducted using a custom-designed iPhone app during an engineering lecture. While no significant difference in retention was evident, several insights were gained in favor of the rich interactions offered by the new CRS. This work highlights the distinct features that make advanced clickers conducive to student engagement and guides future developments in such next generation classroom technologies.