Individual response technology (IRT), a new way of learning, was recently studied to determine whether or not these wireless hand held devices actually help better prepare students by making them more involved during their classes using the IRTs. To conduct this study, Poirier and Feldman arranged a double-blind procedure with two separate college psychology courses. The independent variable of the experiment was the course that received the IRTs to use in class and the other course that did not. The dependent variables represented in the experiment were the measurement of exam grades between the two separate courses and the overall evaluation survey given to the students that participated in the experiment. The hypothesis of the study predicted that the psychology course that was given the IRTs would find their course more enjoyable to attend as well as increasing their exam scores because of the higher class involvement, rather than the course who did not receive the IRTs.
Approximately 865 students were enrolled to participate in the IRT study. 418 students participated in the psychology course that did not receive IRTs, and 477 students participated in the course that did receive the IRTs. All students who participated were undergraduate students at a large state university. There were many materials used to conduct the experiment, for instance the two large groups of students, the classrooms needed to hold the courses, the IRTs (hand held device), an instructor that taught both courses through lectures, videos, discussions, in-class writing and exams, also the course evaluation surveys. The participants were tested thoroughly by attending their 75 minute class twice per week with the same instructor (theses students were unaware of which class was going to receive the IRTs).
The instructor taught both classes the same, except gave the course with the IRTs an extra activity a week, that came with a few questions for the students to answer to see if they were really understanding the material. That is where the instructor watched carefully to record the students’ attitudes and ideas before and after discussing the content. After recording the answers of the entire class, the results would display anonymously for all students to compare and contrast their answers to their classmates’ responses. By doing this the students were able to see for themselves if they really understood what was going on in the classroom. Testing whether or not the IRT use helped students overall exams scores, they averaged out all exam grades and conducted an
