Clickers in the flipped classroom: bring your own device (BYOD) to promote student learning

ABSTRACT

Flipped classrooms continue to grow in popularity across all levels of education. Following this pedagogical trend, the present study aimed to enhance the face-to-face instruction in flipped classrooms with the use of clickers. A game-like clicker application was implemented through a bring your own device (BYOD) model to gamify classroom dynamics in the spirit of question-and-answer competitions. A series of flipped learning lessons were created for the study, with clickers integrated into question-and-answer activities associated with each of the lessons as formative assessments to assist students in the learning of English as a foreign language. In this quasi-experimental research, the data were gathered using a summative assessment, a perception survey, and individual interviews. The collected data were then analyzed to compare the students’ flipped learning experiences, with or without clicker use. The results indicated that the gamified use of clickers had positive influences on student learning, with regard to their performance, perceptions, and preferences. This study thus suggests that the emerging generation of clicker technology allows for a cost-effective BYOD integration model in flipped classrooms, through which it is possible to seamlessly bridge pre-class and in-class activities and to effectively promote student learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Bring your own device
• flipped classrooms
• clickers
• gamification
• English language teaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Hsiu-Ting Hung is an associate professor in the Department of English at the National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology in Taiwan. Her primary research interest focuses on technology-enhanced language learning. Her research work has been published in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET), and some other educational journals.

Additional information

Funding

This research was sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan under the contract number MOST-105-2511-S-327-002-MY2.