To engage students, and assess students’ understanding in real-time, Classroom Response Systems (CRS), have been increasingly used in many engineering classrooms. Previous research has shown that CRS can enhance students’ participation, promote active learning, and develop their critical thinking skills. It can also generate either neutral or positive learning outcomes depending on whether it is combined with other cooperative learning strategies. This paper presents a collaborative study on how to combine the implementation of a web-based CRS with class discussion to clarify student misconceptions in a freshman-level engineering graphics course, a sophomore-level dynamics course, and a senior-level control systems course at a small private institution in the Southeast.

The purpose of the study is to evaluate how web-based CRS combined with class discussion can be used to engage students in class, catch their misconceptions, promote their critical thinking skills, and improve their academic performance in different engineering courses. Anonymous surveys were implemented to collect student's feedback on their attitude towards the use of web- based CRS. The test results from three courses were collected to assess the effectiveness of web- based CRS and class discussion on improving students’ academic performance.