The use of a Classroom Response System to more effectively flip the classroom

Classroom Response Systems (CRS) have been shown to improve student learning outcomes by encouraging student engagement with the course content, instructors and student peers. The system's ability to provide immediate and quality feedback to both students and instructors, particularly in large classes, is highly desirable. While CRS has been used for well over a decade and been shown to successfully improve student engagement and participation, a number of studies have also identified that its use could potentially mean that less material is able to be covered in lectures. Clearly, the approach of cramming CRS into already content-heavy class time does not embrace the potential for CRS to improve student engagement and student learning. The use of CRS should be planned as an integral component of the course which enhances and reinforces the learning outcomes. The effectiveness of CRS depends strongly on the quality and variety of the questions, and the design of the activities to encourage students to engage with the questions. This case study explores the use of a new, low-cost, state-ofthe-art CRS (Top Hat Monocle) which allows students to use their mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops) to respond to a variety of numerical, multiple-choice, short-answer and open-ended discussion questions posed during face-to-face workshops. In order to allow sufficient time to fully engage with the workshop activities traditional lectures were revised and the classroom lecture was flipped. Students worked through narrated lecture material (hand-e-lectures) online, prior to attending the workshops. CRS was included as part of the e-lecture content and feedback from this was incorporated into the workshops. Workshops extended the e-lecture content by including a variety of carefully designed, engaging activities (many were group activities) that used CRS questions to facilitate discussions, problem solving and case study analysis to enhance student cognition. Overall, the new flipped lecture and CRS teaching format demonstrated a substantial increase in the level of student engagement, motivation and attendance compared to previous cohorts.