Title: Clickers in the classroom: a business professor's adoption of a classroom response system

Authors: Guolin Lai; Vanessa Hill; Yuxin Ma

Addresses: Department of Management, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, P.O. Box 43570, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA ' Department of Management, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, P.O. Box 43570, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA ' Center for Innovative Learning and Assessment Technologies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, P.O. Box 42051, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA

Abstract: As a technology-enhanced instructional tool, clickers have been used in a variety of contexts to enrich learners' learning experience and improve their academic performance. However, despite its potential utility, many faculty members in higher education have not adopted this technology even when it is available, nor used it in a pedagogically sound manner. This paper presents a qualitative case study exploring why and how a business faculty member adopted clickers and integrated them into her classroom teaching, the challenges she encountered, and the impact of clicker use on her teaching and on her students' academic performance. This study identified contextual factors that may contribute to or interfere with the adoption of technologies in higher education. The authors also provide insights that might be beneficial to administrators in higher education, to faculty members who are interested in adopting clickers or who are using them, and to researchers in investigating pedagogy related to technology-enhanced learning tools.

Keywords: classroom response systems; clickers; pedagogical affordances; pedagogical challenge; technology adoption; adoption barriers; learning experience; academic performance; technology-enhanced learning; higher education; educational technology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2015.072458

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2015 Vol.18 No.4, pp.451 - 470

Received: 07 Nov 2013
Accepted: 10 Apr 2014
Published online: 14 Oct 2015 *

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