Student evaluation of audience response technology in large lecture classes

In the past few years, audience response technology (ART) has been widely adopted on college campuses, and is especially popular among instructors of large lecture classes. Claims regarding ART’s benefits to students have received only limited empirical evaluation, and prior studies exhibit methodological limitations. The current study provides a multi-dimensional evaluation, utilizing a newly-developed measure, the Audience Response Technology Questionnaire (ART-Q). Data were provided at three points during a semester by undergraduate students (n = 854) who used ART in three large lecture university courses. Results indicate moderately positive evaluations of ART on some dimensions (e.g., ease of use, impact on attendance), with less positive evaluations on others (e.g., influence on preparation for class). These evaluations showed some variability across time of semester and course, but were not substantially affected by gender, ethnicity, or year in school. Findings are discussed with respect to the need for future research on E. L. MacGeorge (&) G. D. Bodie Department of Communication, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] S. R. Homan Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA J. B. Dunning Jr. Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA D. Elmore Department of Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA E. Evans S. Khichadia S. M. Lichti Teaching and Learning Technologies, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA B. Feng Department of Communication, University of California, Davis, CA, USA B. Geddes Concentrics Research, LLC, Indianapolis, IN, USA 123 Education Tech Research Dev (2008) 56:125–145 DOI 10.1007/s11423-007-9053-6