Student Response Systems in Remote Teaching

Botev, J.; Grévisse, C.; Rothkugel, S.

Student response systems (SRS) are a popular and effective tool to promote active learning on site, improving student engagement and attention, motivation and learning performance. Traditionally, SRS are designed for on-site settings. However, the safety measures in relation to the recent COVID-19 pandemic result in remote teaching at an unprecedented scale, with online courses becoming the rule. In this paper, we discuss the utilization of interactive SRS in such remote settings for which they initially were not designed. Over the last term, we conducted several empirical surveys across different groups of Computer Science students on undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and covering a broad age spectrum. The results indicate that, while common interactive features of videoconferencing tools, such as chat or polls, are well appreciated, there is still a need for dedicated SRS with game-based elements and feature sets beyond standard multiple-choice questions. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.