Use of Audience Response Systems to Enhance Student Engagement in Online Synchronous Environments: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Many higher education institutions adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic by switching their teaching into online mode making use of online synchronous sessions using technologies such as Zoom. It was common for lecturers to find it disconcerting that many students were not turning on their cameras and microphones and how this made it difficult to ascertain whether their students were engaged in the sessions at all. This paper examines the experiences of teaching staff in eight courses relating to the use of audience response systems (ARS) to improve the experiences of students and teaching staff when conducting synchronous online teaching sessions or hybrid sessions when they had some face-face students and some online students joining sessions synchronously. Literature is examined that shows the benefits relating to the use of ARS in synchronous online teaching sessions to include anonymity of student responses; enhancement of feedback between teaching staff and students; and teaching staff getting a better sense of student engagement during a session. An analysis of the eight cases presented confirms these benefits in the literature from the perspective of the teaching staff. The findings apply irrespective of the ARS being used and will be of relevance and interest to any teaching staff seeking to improve the experiences of students and teaching staff involved in synchronous online teaching sessions.