The effects of instructor questioning behavior on voluntary student engagement and academic performance in an introductory psychology course

The current study investigated the effects of different instruction styles on student active responding and academic performance in an introductory psychology course at a university. A specific protocol called Personalized Instructor Engagement (PIE) was developed where instructors called on students to answer specific questions, while asking additional questions for students to voluntarily respond. Using a between group design, we exposed one group of students to the PIE condition and the other group to a control condition where all the instructor-prompted questions asked were answered voluntarily by students. The data suggest that students in the PIE condition were significantly more likely to actively participate during class than students in the control group. Although no difference in academic performance was perceived at the group level, identified "low performing" students in the PIE condition performed significantly higher on their quizzes over the course of the semester than students in the control condition. A regression analysis also revealed that the independent variable manipulation played a larger role than active responding alone in relation to academic performance. Implications and future research directions for the active responding literature are discussed.