IS CLASS APPRECIATION JUST A CLICK AWAY?: Using Student Response System Technology to Enhance Shy Students' Introductory American: Government Experience.

Do individual-level student characteristics affect appreciation for and benefit from the use of student response system technology? This paper will investigate the benefit of in-class electronic student response systems ('classroom clickers'). With these systems, students answer questions posed to them in a PowerPoint presentation through the use of handheld remote control devices. Aggregate results can be immediately displayed and discussed. Though this technology is rapidly gaining use in university classrooms across the nation, most academic research on the use of student response systems focuses on the "nuts and bolts" of using the system or on ways that such systems might be useful to all students in particular courses. Little has been done to assess the ways in which individual-level student characteristics might influence the utility of this technology. We investigate the usefulness of this increasingly common classroom technique to understand if it benefits some college students more than others. Specifically, we investigate whether shyer students benefit more from the use of the student response system, with the expectation that shyer students will appreciate using the system more and consequently make more positive gains in attitudes about the class, knowledge of politics, and political engagement. Utilizing original survey data collected from two, Fall 2009 introductory American Government courses, we find that shyer students show greater attitude improvement over the course of the semester, gain more knowledge about politics, and engage in more outside-of-class political discussions than less shy students. Overall, the findings presented here suggest that, at least marginally, the use of in-class electronic response systems can improve the educational experience of students who are typically isolated by traditional classroom teaching methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]