Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Koos Winnips et al.
Do students see the use of posting on questions in the forum of Blackboard?
Students did find it useful (40.2 %) to view back posted question in the Blackboard forum.
Do students think they have better contact with their lecturer?
Students were lightly positive on the statement that via the reactions by mobile phone the lecturer
could better respond to what students’ did or did not understand (29.7 % agreed, 40.7 % neutral).
They did agree (29.7 %) to have a better contact with the lecturer by being able to respond to the
lecturer via their mobile phone.
In what ways would students like to respond during lectures?
Students wanted to send in reactions to the lecturer (76.1%) with very little interest in sending
reactions to peer-students inside or outside the lecture room. The open questions showed that nearly
all reactions would be a question to the lecturer (which was also shown the overview of actually sent
in questions). Some students mentioned giving positive feedback (as a “boost” to the lecturer), or
critiquing the course content. Some students found it distracting to send in questions, and would
prefer to do so in dedicated moments. Others found it more useful to ask the questions “on the spot”
as they could otherwise forget the question.
Technical: did the software work? Was it user-friendly?
40.7 percent of the students has a phone available with the possibility to view web pages.
The cost of reacting (students paid for responding via SMS via their own accounts) varied, with 31.5
percent finding the cost of SMS problematic, 51.4 % of students had no problems with cost (probably
as they have an unlimited SMS bundle).
Other comments mentioned that opening up the room for questions showed the lecturer has an
interest in the students’, which was taken as a positive. A number of students mentioned they had to
get used to the system of asking questions via their mobile phone, and they would probably use it
more as they got more used to it.
Common in the reactions of students was that they would like more fixed blocks to ask and respond to
questions. More questions could be asked for practice with the course content, with direct discussion
of the answers.
Technically, it would be better to always show the number where SMS messages could be sent to
(down below in a fixed place on the sheets), instead of the few slides where it was now shown during
the lecture (at the beginning of the lecture).
4. Conclusions and discussion
Going back to the main questions of this study, this section gives and discusses the conclusions.
Would students learn better in a reactionlecture than in a traditional lecture?
Students did not think that asking questions and reacting, in itself, helped their learning, nor did they
attend more lectures because they were now able to respond. Direct effects on learning (such as
differences in grades) were not found. Indirectly, students did find the questions and discussions
around the questions useful, and they spent time after the lectures discussing the answers via the
Blackboard learning environment of the course.
Even if there would be a direct effect on learning via the reactionlecture, the effect would be small,
given the relatively low number of answers. Possibly, by building in more dedicated moments to give
reactions, reactionlectures can be used more effectively (as discussed in the third study question).
What are the opinions of students on giving direct reactions during a lecture?
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