EVALUATION OF ELECTRONIC STUDENT RESPONSE TECHNOLOGY IN A GENERAL EDUCATION OCEANOGRAPHY COURSE

During the summer of 2004 an electronic student response system was employed in a 100-level general education oceanography course at Western Illinois University. The system was used to record student responses to multiple choice questions posed during PowerPoint™ lecture presentations and in-class review sessions. Since their responses to lecture questions were included in determination of their grade, nearly all of the students (60 of 61) in the course purchased remote controls and paid the course access fee required by the electronic response system developers. At the midpoint of the semester the class means and standard deviations of quiz and exam scores were similar to those achieved by students enrolled in the same course during the previous four summer terms. However, in a five-point satisfaction survey of student reactions to the technology conducted at mid-term, 60% of the students (21 of 35 respondents) felt that the electronic response system aided their learning in the course and 37% (13 respondents) responded neutrally to the technology’s influence. On the same survey 57% of the students (20 respondents) indicated that they would like to use electronic response systems in future courses while only 14% (5 respondents) felt negatively about the use of this technology. When asked in the open-response section of the survey to describe how the technology enhanced their learning, a number of students responded that it made the class more fun and forced them to both attend class and pay closer attention during lectures. These data suggest that electronic student response systems may provide an effective means for engaging students in large general education geoscience courses.