Phones up, Silence out: Increasing Lecture Participation via Audience Response Tools

Student IDs: 1730823, 1738308, 1729172

The Problem

Where did our idea originate from? 

During our time at university, we have noticed and experienced hesitation to verbally engage in content during lectures. Students are intimidated by the idea of raising their hands and speaking their thoughts because of the fear and embarrassment of being wrong in front of all of their peers. In an opportunity sample of 76 students on campus, we asked two questions:    

Our data reflected our experiences of lecture engagement at university, which is supported by empirical evidence: research has shown that large classes are intimidating, which reduces the likelihood of student engagement, inquiry and feedback (Frederick, 2002; Geske, 1992; Iverson, 2002). University courses can be defined as “lecture-centric”, with limited opportunities for students to interact with the instructor (Boyer, 1987). Therefore, a communication gap between students and the lecturers can clearly be seen within conventional settings of lectures.

Our idea originated from witnessing how engagement methods vary extensively across lecturers. Some lecturers would choose to simply pose a question out to a large room full of students in the hope that someone will respond. Others would go beyond this method and impose a more compulsory method for students to respond to by incorporating Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) at the beginning of each lecture. Finally, some incorporate audience response technology (ART) in their classes for students to respond and ask questions on their phones, tablets, and computers. The latter two methods tend to have a lot more responses. Both methods share a common theme: the anonymity behind the interaction. 

Why is lecture engagement important?

A wealth of research suggests that active participation in classroom discussions positively impacts learning outcomes (Benjamin, 1991; Bonwell & Eison, 1991; Wilson & Korn, 2007). Class participation may improve critical thinking around the subject, regardless of content (Garside, 1996; Jones, 2008).

A meta-analysis of 225 studies of undergraduate teaching methods by Freeman et al. (2014) looked at traditional lecturing versus active learning methods and its effect on exam scores and failure rates. They found reduced failure rates and increased exam scores amongst teaching methods where students were made active participants. 

Moreover, lecturers sometimes avoid audience interactions due to “the silence” (Boniecki & Moore, 2003), which is the uncomfortable period of time that happens when a lecturer asks a question and receives no response. This silence is more likely to happen in large classrooms (e.g. lecture halls) where students have a more diffused responsibility to respond (McKeachie, 2002).  

How would Audience Response Technology help?

Audience Response Technology (ART) allows individuals to make anonymous, live contributions in large groups. Vevox is a well-known ART that would provide many benefits to students if used in lectures. Due to the anonymous nature of asking questions on the app, students would be able to ask questions judgement-free. This gives every student in the room a voice, making classes more inclusive by allowing everyone to contribute, not just the regular contributors. Providing a fun and interactive form of active learning could also help maintain attendance rates, especially towards the end of the term. 

Vevox is currently promoted by Warwick University IT Services. Their e-learning web pages, aimed at lecturers, provide a list of ways that Vevox is used at Warwick:  

The Audience and Scope of our project

Our intervention aims to increase lecture engagement through the promotion of Vevox. There are two perspectives we could have taken to the issue: The first was to primarily change the behaviour of students, possibly by increasing their self-efficacy to raise their hand. The second was to focus primarily on lecturer behaviours that would make participating more accessible for students (e.g. using audience response tools). We decided to take the latter approach to the issue because we believed more effective and measurable outcomes were more likely. It is more efficient to change the lecturer’s behaviour, which subsequently changes the behaviour of students, instead of trying to change hundreds of student’s behaviour.

In particular, we decided to target lecturers within the Department of Psychology at Warwick University because we have seen first-hand numerous opportunities for engagement tools to be used in lectures, for example, where MCQs are an important aspect of module assessment and exams. We believe that making the psychology department our focus will be manageable for the three of us, as we will be able to effectively tailor the quality of our chosen techniques to each lecturer we approach. 

Our Intervention

The first step was to find lecturers that would be interested in using Vevox to make their classes more interactive. There is no more straightforward method than to ‘just ask’. People often give up on asking due to the potential embarrassment they would have to go through if their requests were rejected (Flynn & Bohns, 2010). Nonetheless, the likelihood of the other person agreeing to the request is also very much underestimated by the requester (Flynn & Bohns, 2013). Overcoming our false heuristics, we decided to contact prospective lecturers through email. 

Such a method was highly ineffective in instigating behaviour change as 1) it presented no sense of urgency (Swain, Hanna, & Abendroth, 2006), and 2) presented no credible evidence of effectiveness (Armstrong, 2011). Correcting ourselves, we presented the data that we have collected on students’ perception of lecture engagement and the need for the implementation of an ART to lecturers in person. This method was highly effective as four out of five lecturers showed interest in implementing Vevox into their classes after short discussions. This renewed effort of approach is even more effective because we approached lecturers in real life rather than through email. Cooperation and persuasion decrease if the requester is perceived to be more distant (Bradner & Mark, 2002). For future reference: never expect an email to be enough to instigate behaviour change. 

To drive the “interest” into actual behaviour change, our next step was to set up a meeting with the lecturers and pitch them our proposition. We have implemented several persuasion techniques throughout our pitch to increase the probability of behaviour change in our target audience.

The first part of the meetings were concerned with addressing any negative biases against technology. Some lecturers had a lack of confidence in technology and were hesitant to explore the use of ART. We would ask them to think of 3 moments where they had to use technology in their work lives. We did this because we wanted to reinforce and emphasize the idea that lecturers are already “tech-oriented” people. The need for consistency within one’s attitudes, beliefs and actions has long been established (Festinger, 1957; Heider, 1946). People choose their future behaviour based on whether or not it is in line with previous actions (Cialdini, 1993). All lecturers were able to do this quite easily, so we were able to remind them that they already use technology in their work lives.

We used social proof by establishing a norm that some of the world's best universities incorporate Vevox. We made it explicitly clear that other lecturers from the University were already using Vevox, such as lecturers in Warwick Business School (WBS). Because of the prestige and innovation associated with WBS, this method had an effective direct link to each lecturer. They were more likely to copy the behaviour of lecturers from the most distinguished department within our University. They may have had personal connections with individuals in the department too. This would be in line with research conducted by Cialdini (1999), who found that people would act in accordance with what their friends/peers were doing, using their behaviour as a frame of reference. This is done especially when it is not known what to do in the current situation, so other’s social actions are taken as a frame of reference of what to do in that unknown situation (Amblee & Bui, 2012). The slide below was taken from the Vevox website and was presented to the lecturer. 

The next part of the meeting involved explicitly showing the lecturer how simple it was to poll a question on Vevox and showing them explicitly how they could implement the technology in a lecture. To be effective users of the software, lecturers must feel confident in using it. 

We attempted to increase the lecturer’s perceived self-efficacy towards Vevox by giving them a hands-on, live demonstration on how to set-up questions for their lectures. According to the Theory of Planned behavior, a person is more likely to carry out a task if they have a consolidated belief in their ability to complete the said task (Ajzen, 1991). This step was imperative as veteran teachers are more likely to have lower self-efficacy in technology (Lee & Tsai, 2010). By demonstrating their capabilities in technology, we expect to see an increased likelihood of incorporating Vevox into lectures. Previous studies support the effectiveness of increasing self-efficacy by showing the EFFECTIVENESS of INCREASING self-efficacy in driving populations’ participation in more technologically-oriented governmental programs (Gong & Yan, 2004; Susanto & Goodwin, 2013). The two slides below are examples of the types of slides we presented to each lecturer. 

We used reciprocity by stating if the lecturer agrees to use Vevox in lectures, even just once, we would offer to type up all of the questions they plan to ask. Reciprocity can be defined as the phenomenon in which people go about “responding to kindness with kindness in order to sustain a profitable long term relationship”(Sobel, 2005). We felt that making a lecturer's Vevox account ready to use instantly, without any additional time commitments for them, would be an effective way of obtaining a positive outcome. This method turned out to be highly effective as most of the lecturers we spoke to took us up on this offer, having us create question banks which they could import for their upcoming classes. In return, they would use Vevox and allow us to photograph them using it for our project. This fulfils the concept of reciprocity: we helped them to increase student engagement, and they reciprocated by allowing us to document their usage as part of our project.

We ended our meeting by using implementation intentions. This self-regulatory strategy is often known as “I intend to do ‘y’ when the situation ‘x’ is encountered.” By adhering to this rule, the individual commits to performing a goal-directed behaviour when critical situation ‘x’ is encountered (Gollwitzer & Branstatter, 1997). We decided to use this method because it has been used successfully in other contexts, such as getting addicts to quit their addictions (Gollwitzer et al., 2001). We wanted lecturers to form a situational intention which could be realized if we created the right set of circumstances. This situation would then obligate the lecturer to realise their original intention goal ‘y’ (Gollwitzer, 1999). Thus, we tried to create the right set of circumstances by asking lecturers to set out a date and time where a lecture in which they would use it, situation ‘x’. Using Vevox would then be action, ‘y’, fulfilling their implementation intention.

Finally, in a way of reciprocity, a persuaded lecturer who was satisfied with the audience engaging effects of Vevox helped us out by sending out a mass email to the Psychology department at our university. The email, which can be seen below, contained his own positive experiences with using Vevox and a recommendation that other teaching staff should also try it out. Word of mouth and customer referrals have been a highly effective method in driving sales and commercial success in the business world (Silverman, 2011). Consumers are more likely to be persuaded by their peers rather than a salesperson who is seen to have ulterior motives, such as making a profit (Verlegh et al., 2004). When making decisions from third-party information, people want to feel that they are driving their actions for their own good, not for someone else to profit off of (Friestad & Wright, 1994). The way that people determine between the two is by evaluating how strongly the information that they are receiving is associated with a persuasion technique (Campbell & Kirmani, 2011). The stronger the association, the stronger the perception of an ulterior motive, meaning the less likely the person will be persuaded. To put it into context, an email sent from a fellow lecturer would be perceived as peer-to-peer advice, whereas an email with a Vevox representative would be perceived as a motive to simply drive results for our academic project. Both parties are simply driving for the same change of behavior, for lecturers to use Vevox, and yet, an email from a peer can be much more persuasive. Indeed, within the first half an hour, we received emails from two lecturers who were also interested in implementing Vevox into their classes. 

Throughout our project, we made use of the foot-in-the-door technique (Fraser & Freedman, 1966), which states that following the acceptance of an initial request,  a person would perceive themselves as someone who is a complying person. Hence, to commit to that self-perception, they would be more likely to comply with similar future requests. Our first request was to ask lecturers to spare some time to speak to us about Vevox. Following our meeting, the subsequent request would be to implement Vevox into their following lectures. Finally, following discussions of the effectiveness of Vevox, we would ask if they would be willing to discuss the usefulness of Vevox to their colleagues to help us ‘spread the word’. In other words, our project’s success was based on a sequence of “yes” from different prospects. All successful requests led to further and larger requests that were instrumental to our movement for behaviour change. 

Outlook 

What were the outcomes of our behaviour change project?

Over the course of 2 weeks, we persuaded 7 lecturers to incorporate Vevox into their teaching. Below are a series of pictures showing evidence of Vevox usage in lectures. We saw a substantial increase in student participation as almost everyone in the classroom always connected to the meeting room whenever it was used.  

Are there other ways of promoting lecture engagement?

Promoting Vevox software is not the only way of increasing student engagement. Literature has provided multiple different methods of increasing engagement. A token economy system could be implemented, where students receive extra credit for in-class participation (Boniecki & Moore, 2003). Giving students tasks to prepare for upcoming lectures can increase engagement because, with increased knowledge of class content, students will be more willing to speak up in class (Fassinger, 1995). Finally, it has been suggested that smaller classroom sizes and having students sit close to the front and centre of the room could also increase engagement (Karp & Yoels, 1976; Morrison & Thomas, 1975). Other projects aiming to increase student engagement in the future could look to any of these techniques.

How could our project be extended? 

We could have used scarcity as a technique. According to the IT service, there are only 100 Premium Vevox accounts to distribute across the whole University. Currently, there is a waiting list that refreshes each academic term. We could have exploited this exclusivity of Premium Vevox accounts, which includes additional question types. An ambitious extension could be to persuade the IT department to invest in more Premium Vevox accounts, using evidence of higher demand. 

To ensure that the implementation of Vevox is a long-lasting, permanent change to teaching styles and is not seen as a gimmick, we suggest that an evaluative question about Vevox is included in module evaluation forms. Based on current data, we believe that feedback from students on this question will almost always be positive. This will, therefore, reinforce the commitment to Vevox in future cohorts. 

This project does not have to be limited to the undergraduate courses, and can easily be applied to postgraduate courses, where class sizes are already much smaller. It could be argued that postgraduates would benefit from it even more, as the content is often more difficult, so it makes it more important to monitor the students’ understanding by increasing their lecture engagement. 

We could extend the size of our project, beyond the Warwick Psychology Department. One could criticise our project for being too small-scale. However, we would counter this by saying long-term, deeper change in a few is more valuable than a short-term, superficial change in many. We would continue to apply our behaviour change techniques to other departments on campus. Over time, this would eventually make Vevox a universal teaching method and would make students more engaged on average all over campus.

Finally, another way of achieving universal adoption of Vevox is by considering defaults from Dolan et al. 's (2012) MINDSPACE framework. We could persuade senior course directors to structure the default lecture teaching style to include Vevox usage, by making it a requirement for all lecturers in the department, new and current. We know that even explicitly suggesting usage could imply that Vevox is recommended by senior authority (Johnson & Goldstein, 2003). Persuading more senior figures would involve presenting documented evidence of the long-term benefits of Vevox over many cohorts. Structuring the default to maximise the benefit of students would increase usage exponentially because it would be met with little resistance from most lecturers, who will accept whatever the default is. 

By Aladino De Lucia, Rafael Lum, Abdullah Khan

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