Using Whiteboards as Active Responding to Make Higher Education More Inclusive

Active responding strategies improve learning and increase students' engagement. This study evaluated the effect of whiteboards, an effective and low-cost active responding strategy, on the students' perception of inclusion and frequency of their participation in class. All the 54 undergraduate students enrolled in a course on motivation went through the two conditions that comprised this study. In one section of each class, the students actively responded to their professor questions by writing on whiteboards; during the other section, they didn’t use boards but voluntarily raised their hands. Students reported a higher perception of inclusion during sections with whiteboards than in the sections without them. The frequency of their voluntary responses was higher in the sections without whiteboards.