The effectiveness of student response systems on engagement and achievement in high school science instruction

The use of technology to extend and change the daily experience of education in traditional classrooms continues to rise. The Alberta government is committed to using technology in classrooms and has provided direct funding to install an LCD projector and an interactive whiteboard in nearly every classroom in the province. Motivating this change is a common belief that technology will engage students and transform the classroom into a learning environment in which younger generations can understand and excel. This study evaluated those beliefs in the context of another common technology student response systems. A comparison was made between science units taught with and without these systems to answer the following question: Do student response systems increase class engagement and summative achievement? This study concluded that in public high school science classrooms these systems increased some measures of engagement but did not significantly improve student exam scores. --Leaf ii.