Engaging Students with Interactive Education: The Motivational Qualities of Student Response Systems

Abstract

Educators have incorporated technologies designed to ‘gamify’ or increase the fun and reward in classroom learning. One of them, the student response systems (SRS), is increasingly used, but little is known about how it can best be employed to create positive learning climates. Informed by self-determination theory (SDT), a study - separated into two experiments - investigated the role of SRS as an educational tool and its relationship with academic well-being outcomes that have previously been linked to positive learning environments. Participants (n=30) in a pilot study were randomly assigned to a two-month experiment with two conditions: half used the SRS while the rest were taught the same syllabus with the traditional way. We found that academic well-being increased in the SRS class but stayed stable in the traditional class. Study 1 further investigated the role of SRS as an educational tool and its relationship with support for autonomy, relatedness, and competence needs of SDT and downstream academic well-being outcomes. Students (n=120) participated in five within-subject conditions that compared the motivational climates of teamwork, competition, and choice to anonymous SRS engagement and traditional learning. Results showed that students’ psychological need satisfaction, and in turn their academic well-being was increased when SRS was implemented using supportive motivational climates.

A Gamified Experiential Learning Intervention for Engaging Students Through Satisfying Needs

“…These findings build on previous research (David & Weinstein, 2023), which suggested that GET enhanced the learning experience, but only when gamified experiential strategies were in use. When students engaged in GET as part of a team, had the choice to participate, or engaged in friendly competition, they felt need satisfied, which correlated with more self-reported effort and interest in contrast to using GET anonymously or when answering the same questions on paper.…”

“…For example, Sun and Hsieh (2018) conducted an experiment on 118 junior high school students and two teachers and found that making friendly competition salient can increase intrinsic motivation and engagement. Similar findings for friendly competition were identified in a brief classroom experiment with younger students (David & Weinstein, 2023).…”

“…Second, to date, no field experiments with children have been conducted manipulating the daily use of technology in the classroom for an entire academic semester. Previous experiments applied motivational climates just once or in very few sessions (Boudadi & Gutiérrez-Colón, 2020; David & Weinstein, 2023; Sun & Hsieh, 2018). Although those analyses were exploratory, we see one of the most exciting findings of the current work the benefits observed across time when motivationally supportive education contexts were used.…”

“…Such Gamified Experiential Technologies (GET; David & Weinstein, 2023) engage students through interactive learning in the classroom (Pearson, 2017). For example, one such form of classroom technology, the SRS (Liu et al, 2019)—a system that consists of a handheld device named a “clicker” (Barber & Njus, 2007; Caldwell, 2007), is an increasingly popular way (Brown et al, 2014) to use game elements (Ebadi et al, 2021) to promote fun and engagement (Zainuddin et al, 2020), interest and effort (Werbach & Hunter, 2012), educational knowledge (Xi & Hamari, 2019), and broadly, academic well-being (O’Brien, 2016).…”

“…These student-oriented approaches in which education assists social, academic, and emotional development are increasingly used to make learning more fun and exciting (McCombs, 2004), support student participation, involvement, and attention, set up a team environment, stimulate responses, discussions, and practical experiences (Senthamarai, 2018). Such Gamified Experiential Technologies (GET; David & Weinstein, 2023) engage students through interactive learning in the classroom (Pearson, 2017). For example, one such form of classroom technology, the SRS (Liu et al, 2019)-a system that consists of a handheld device named a "clicker" (Barber & Njus, 2007;Caldwell, 2007), is an increasingly popular way (Brown et al, 2014) to use game elements (Ebadi et al, 2021) to promote fun and engagement (Zainuddin et al, 2020), interest and effort (Werbach & Hunter, 2012), educational knowledge (Xi &Hamari, 2019), andbroadly, academic well-being (O'Brien, 2016).…”