Communication preference and the effectiveness of clickers in an Asian university economics course

Abstract

In this project a web-based classroom response system ("clickers") was used in teaching an intermediate level economics course. The main purpose of this project is to find out if the use of clickers is beneficial to students taking economics and examine if students' communication preference (e.g. instant messaging, face-to-face conversations, etc.) has an impact on the effectiveness of clickers in improving learning outcomes. Questionnaires and examination performance were used to assess the effectiveness of clickers. The questionnaire results show that around 75% of students in the treatment (clickers) group generally agreed that clickers allowed them to express their views more freely. We also observed that students who prefer to use instant messaging rather than making conversations are generally more positive towards clickers. The use of clickers also benefits the lecturer - teaching evaluation of the lecturer was significantly better for the clickers group. Comparing the examination scores of the two groups, the treatment group performed considerably better and statistically significant differences were found basing on paired t-tests on the differences. The regression analysis further discovered that the use of clickers has the most significant positive effect on students who prefers to communicate through instant messaging.