Facilitating student autonomy in large-scale lectures with audience response systems

Lectures in higher education often address audiences that consist of over one hundred students. In this setting, it is arguably difficult to take into account individual interests of each participant. This may result in low motivation, decreased learning outcomes as well as an overall low effectiveness of lectures. Self-determination theory suggests that perceived autonomy increases intrinsic motivation, which may in turn improve learning outcomes. We therefore propose to foster perceived autonomy among students by introducing elected elements (e.g., practical examples and topics) that students can vote for with an audience response system. To investigate this instructional approach, we conducted a quasi-experimental field study with two groups of participants: One group was given the choice over some content of the lectures while the other group attended an identical course without choice. Results show that providing the choice over elected elements leads to an increase in perceived influence on the course. Students who reported high perceived influence also experienced high intrinsic motivation. Regarding learning outcomes, intrinsically motivated students reported high perceived learning gains, yet there was no association with test performance. Based on these findings, we derive several avenues for future research regarding the use of elected elements in large-scale lectures.