Cold Calls to Enhance Class Participation and Student Engagement

The question whether cold calls increase student engagement in the classroom has not been conclusively answered in the literature. This study describes the automated system to implement unbiased, randomized cold calling by posing a question, allowing all students to think first and then calling on a particular student to respond. Since we already have a measure of the level of student engagement as the self-reported class-participation entries from the students, its correlation to cold calling is also further studied. The results show that there is a statistically significant increase in the class participation reported, and therefore in student engagement, in the course for which the cold-calling system was implemented. Finally, along with the conclusions, the future plans and the limitations of this study are explained.