Student Response Systems as a successful tool for formative assessment: students’ perceptions in a university pilot study

Student Response Systems (SRS) are in- creasingly used in Universities and schools around the world. In Italy, they have only been in use for a few years, but are spread- ing rapidly thanks to the fact that they can be used as simple, free Apps on students’ smartphones. SRSs have had positive feed- back from both students and teachers, es- pecially in terms of enhanced engagement and attention, peer interaction, and poten- tial for formative assessment. The results of a pilot study in a university Educational Technology program have shown that stu- dents greatly appreciate SRSs. Above all, they would like to use SRSs as a “learning check”. In particular, they stated that they have a very positive perception of the feed- back provided by the teacher, which help them gain a better understanding of the most important concepts of the topics cov- ered. This interaction process helps the teacher to develop a formative assessment process that must, however, be managed and prepared with care.