The Best Classroom Response System for an Interactive Classroom

Whether you're teaching in person, online, or in a hybrid or blended situation, it's essential that you implement interactive elements into your classroom to keep students engaged. There was a time when teachers lectured and students were expected to take notes and remember the information to spit it back in an end-of-term test. These days are no longer. There is a much better way of learning, and an interactive classroom is at the heart of it.

With the power of Echo360's wide range of learning engagement, assessment, and authoring solutions, your classroom can be fully interactive. For example, Point Solutions contains everything you need to engage with your students, including the top classroom response system available.

What is a classroom response system?

When you're presenting information to your students, whether you're doing so live in person or online via a video recording, it's important to keep them engaged. Requiring responses from each student throughout the presentation is the best way to keep their attention. In a traditional classroom, the instructor has students raise their hands and they call on one student to answer questions, assuming that all students benefit from the interaction. But do they?

To make the classroom truly interactive for all students, our technology allows you to embed questions on the information presented that all students must answer. These can be in the format of polls or quizzes. If you have just presented a chunk of information about the Gettysburg Address, for example, you can insert a two-question poll with one factual question and one opinion question to see where each student is at in their understanding of the subject. Students can use their phones or clickers that you provide to answer the questions. Students who are attending class online can use their laptops or desktop computers as well as their phones — whatever is most convenient for them.

The best part is that you can see all of the answers immediately. For the factual question, you can see exactly how many students got the answer correct. This can alert you as to whether you need to cover the topic a bit more or whether the class is ready to go on. For the opinion question, you can read the room and see that your students are thinking about the subject as it applies to their lives. The answers can suggest future essay topics or research projects.

Why does student engagement matter?

Engagement is a measure of how involved, enthusiastic, and committed each student is to their classroom. Vast amounts of research have gone into determining the effects of student engagement on learning outcomes. While engagement is sometimes dismissed as a “soft” concept, Gallup reports that it is essential for thriving schools. Their research reports that engaged students are 2.5 times more likely to say that they do well in school and get excellent grades, and are 4.5 times more likely than other students to be hopeful about the future. Soft or not, these are the kinds of students that all instructors hope to have in their classes.

How to Engage Your Students With a Classroom Response System

Whether you're looking for an in-person or online classroom response system, Point Solutions is the answer. Contact us today to get a demonstration of all the many features powered by Echo360's platform, which is based on our e³ philosophy based on equity, engagement, and evidence. You can end up with your dream classroom!