Increasing classroom engagement and student comprehension through the use of clickers: an Italian secondary school experience

"Clickers" are individual response devices that allow each student to respond to questions presented by teachers. This technology promises to be beneficial since it increases student engagement and provides prompt feedback - two key practices that stimulate learning. Although a number of researchers have studied clickers in higher education and in large classroom settings, there has been very little research in small classrooms and at lower levels. Our research has investigated the role of clickers in five different classes of an Italian grade one secondary school. Two different situations of interactive teaching were compared. In both cases, teachers pose a variety of questions during the course of the explanation, but in the first situation they received answers by “hand-raising”, in the second situation through the electronic devices. We wanted to verify differences posed by the use of technology regarding: a) learning outcomes, b) student engagement, c) student’s evaluation regarding learning conditions. Results are consistent with other research, which forecasts that students are more cognitively engaged while using clickers; however data showed unexpected differences in learning outcomes based on the subject matter.