How Quiz-based Tools can improve students’ engagement and participation in the classroom

Student Response Systems exhibit a long usage history, begun with clickers and recently evolved toward Webbased systems. Several studies show that they improve students’ engagement and participation, but also show some drawbacks (clickers costs, distraction and equity in Web-based systems). In this paper, we present our implementation of a Student Response System integrated within a collaborative application. Our approach does not require an Internet connection, has no cost, is flexible, and includes the possibility of arranging a Student Response Systems with a wide set of collaborative tools. We also present an evaluation study involving teachers and students from a high school. Results show improvements in students’ participation and engagement. Finally we found some differences between the teachers and students groups with regard to user experience, usefulness, and long-term behaviors.