The Effect of Using “Student Response Systems (SRS)” on Faculty Performance and Student Interaction in the Classroom

Abstract

Enhancing faculty performance and student interaction during the lecture is essential to achieve sustainable learning development. The current study aims to evaluate the effect of using “Student response systems (SRS)” on faculty performance and student interaction in the classroom. The faculty members at King Saud University were encouraged to join a university-scale educational project that involve utilizing SRSs within their classes. From Fall 2016 to Fall 2019, a total of 371 faculty members and 19,746 students were enrolled in the current study. By the end of each semester, faculty and student satisfaction surveys were distributed to evaluate their perceptions of using SRS in the class. The faculty members’ and students’ response rates were 75.7% and 38.1%, respectively, and represented 18 different colleges from different disciplines within the university. Furthermore, the study covered a wide range of study levels for bachelor’s degrees ranging from levels 1–10. The study demographics showed that 60% of the total participating faculty members and 64% of students were females. Interestingly, the majority of participating faculty members (40%) and students (44%) belong to health colleges. Among the most beneficial effects of using SRSs, is that it increased the interaction, focus, and participation of students in the lecture and stimulated their desire to attend and prepare for the lecture. It also helped the faculty members to improve their teaching strategies and enabled them to know the weaknesses or strengths of students, which in turn led to the improvement of the entire educational process. The majority of faculty members as well as the students recommend applying it in other courses and future semesters. These findings were generally consistent over the whole studied seven semesters. SRSs offer a potential tool to improve faculty teaching practices, enhance student engagement, and achieve sustainable learning development among different disciplines.