Is Class Appreciation Just a Click Away?: Using Student Response System Technology to Enhance Shy Students' Introductory American Government Experience

Abstract

Do individual-level student characteristics affect appreciation for, and benefit from, the use of student response system technology? We investigate the usefulness of in-class electronic student response systems (“classroom clickers”) to understand if it benefits some college students more than others. Specifically, we investigate whether shyer students benefit more from the use of the student response system, with the expectation that shyer students will appreciate using the system more and consequently make more positive gains in attitudes about the class, knowledge of politics, and political engagement. Utilizing original survey data collected from Fall 2009 and Fall 2010 introductory American Government courses, we find that shyer students show greater attitude improvement over the course of the semester, exhibit more knowledge about politics and engage in more outside-of-class political discussions than less shy students when electronic student response systems are utilized, but no such difference emerges when more traditional in-class feedback methods are used. Overall, the findings presented here suggest that, at least marginally, the use of in-class electronic response systems can improve the educational experience of students who are typically isolated by traditional classroom teaching methods.

Keywords:

• American Government
• classroom pedagogy
• clickers
• technology

Notes

Notes: ns =difference is not statistically significant at the p < 0.05 level (two-tailed). Data collected with survey conducted on December 9, 2009.

Notes: ns =difference is not statistically significant at the p < .05 level (two-tailed). Data collected with survey conducted on December 8, 2010.

Notes: Significance levels are two-tailed; ns =not statistically significant at p < .05. Data collected from surveys conducted on August 26, 2009 and December 9, 2009.

Notes: Significance levels are two-tailed; ns = not statistically significant at p < .05. Data collected from surveys conducted on August 30, 2010 and December 8, 2010.

Notes: Significance levels are two-tailed; ns =not statistically significant at p < .05. Data collected from in-class surveys conducted on August 26, 2009 and December 9, 2009.

Notes: Significance levels are two-tailed; ns =not statistically significant at p < .05. Data collected from in-class surveys conducted on August 30, 2010 and December 8, 2010.

For a detailed description of the types of systems available and how they work see Cain and Robinson (2008).

The university had a Fall 2009 enrollment of 16,795 undergraduate students, with African American and Hispanic students comprising about 29% of the undergraduate community (SHSU Fall 2008 Mini Profile. Produced by the SHSU Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. Available online at: http://www.shsu.edu/~ird_www/miniprofiles/documents/FinalMiniProfile-Fall2009.pdf).

Further, while there were a number of students from both the control and treatment sections who dropped the course during the semester, the drop rate was less than 4% in both groups.

These items are a subset of the Cheek and Buss (1981) shyness and sociability scale.

The index exhibits a Cronbach's alpha score of .796.

Students in the control group were asked about their appreciation of the paper quizzes. We expect that shyer students might also express greater appreciation for these paper quizzes.

Students in the control group were asked to rate the cost-benefit ratio of the paper quizzes in terms of the cost of class time, instead of money, associated with the quizzes.

While previously held feelings about the class should obviously not be expected to exhibit change over the course of the semester, it is possible that student's subjective perceptions about these previously held feelings might change. Preliminary testing of these measures suggests that they better capture subjective feelings about the course rather than more objective recall of actual perceptions of the course. Accordingly, we employ these items as measures of “student's interest” rather than as measures of pure recall.

Two of these “civics quiz” questions cover basic, factual knowledge about the institutions of American government (U.S. Supreme Court and Presidency), while the other two cover current events (names of current officeholders). Both types of information are covered in the core of the class and are typically quizzed with the clickers/paper quizzes and follow-up discussion.

Statistical tests for the presence of outliers were conducted and no such cases were included in the analyses presented here.

Relating to the course objectives regarding basic knowledge about key institutional structures and current events, this four-item scale contains questions about the positions of key political figures and basic institutional structures.

The improvements in scores for both groups are statistically significant at p ≤ .05 (two-tailed).

The improvements in scores for both groups are statistically significant at p ≤ .01 (two-tailed).

This difference is marginally statistically significant at p = .076 (two-tailed).

While this difference reaches a significance level of only p = .136 (two-tailed), the substantive difference remains impressive.

This difference is statistically insignificant (p = .762, two-tailed).

These two items partially capture successful completion of the third course objective, “understanding the role of the citizen in the U.S. democratic system.”