Based on the criticism from both the evaluation of Norwegian pedagogy (NFR 2004/2006) and the Norwegian student organizations, this study focuses on if, and eventually how, feedback clickers (TurningPoint®) can be used to overcome some of the challenges lecturers have in large plenary lectures. The Bologna-process, new standards for national curricula, increasing diversity among university students and the digitalization have changed some of the underlying premises for teaching and learning in today’s universities. New policy documents, research and experiences from the university field suggest that there is a potential to develop plenary lectures in light of new technology and more updated teaching methods. The concept, formative assessment, is underpinning this time of upheaval and this case study focus on how bachelor students in psychology in large plenary lectures experience the use of innovative technology, feedback clickers, from their points of view. International research within the area shows that new technology as feedback clickers can, under well planned didactical circumstances, have the potential to enhance interactivity, attention, and reflection, as well as providing feedback and formative assessment, which are the ground pillars of the Quality Reform in Norway.
The project was initiated and developed by Professor Rune Johan Krumsvik in 2007–2008 as a result of a pilot and a successful grant application for funding, to explore techniques to evaluate students’ understanding in lectures as mediating tools to support formative assessment and feedback. From this funding base, he initiated the DBR project on ‘formative assessment in higher education’, where the purpose was to examine and develop these activities, in which a teaching design based on authentic assignments, discussions and student response systems plays a key role in transforming lectures towards a more student-centered way of organizing learning and teaching in lectures. The pedagogical design consisted of cases, videos, discussions and voting options developed by Krumsvik.
In 2011 and two PhD-candidates were employed as part of the project and we started to explore this design and to develop it further, as a part of several ongoing design-based research projects.
In order to try to continuously improve the teaching design, prof. Krumsvik applied the response technology over approximately 400 teaching hours in the period 2008–2016 in his own teaching in large lectures with psychology students. However, it was necessary for several epistemological steps back along the way to reflect upon and examine how well-planned teaching designs, Student Response Systems, and video cases may play a role in transforming large lectures into a more student-centered way of organizing learning and teaching. On a general basis, these mediating artifacts (“clickers”) changed the premises for participation and created new affordances for both students and lecturers in large lectures. Professor Carl Wieman (Smith, Wood, Adams, Wieman, Knight, Guild & Su 2009) also revealed the same findings (Krumsvik had a brief collaboration with Wieman in 2015 regarding the use of response technology in large lectures). After nine years, such mediating artefacts were in many ways socially constructed and interwoven into a didactical design with certain affordances to empower students’ “voices” and participation in such settings. However, beyond this setting, it had no affordances for either students or lecturer, and it was in many ways perceived and socially constructed as artefact with no affordances other than (object ontologically) being a piece of plastic.