Pros and Cons of Audience Response Systems in the Education of Health Professionals

Abstract

Well over 1000 articles have been written on the subject of Audience Response Systems in the education of health professionals. These studies have involved the students at the undergraduate, graduate and continuing professional education levels. From the articles found, a subset of over 120 articles of ARS use in health professional education was reviewed. A holistic view of the results in these studies showed that there are clear benefits and drawbacks to ARS use from the perspective of the students and teachers. Benefits were found to fit ten (10) distinct categories while drawbacks fit into six (6) discrete categories. This paper summarizes and discusses the benefits (i.e. pros) and drawbacks (i.e. cons) of the use of ARS in the educational process of health professionals.

Keywords

• Audience response systems
• ARS
• clickers
• learning outcomes
• interactive learning
• active learning