Interactive Projector as an Interactive Teaching Tool in the Classroom: Evaluating Teaching Efficiency and Interactivity

This study reports on a measurement that is used to investigate interactivity in the classrooms and examines the impact of integrating the interactive projector into middle school science classes on classroom interactivity and students’ biology learning. A total of 126 7th grade Taiwanese students were involved in the study and quasi-experimental research with two-group posttest-only design was employed. Students in the experimental group were taught by using interactive projector (n=61) and their counterparts were taught by general data projector (n=65). The results show that there was no significant difference in students’ learning achievement between teaching through interactive projector and general data projector. More interactions were observed in the experimental group; however, its perceived teaching efficiency was not better than teaching with a general data projector. It is suggested that the integration of interactive technologies in the classrooms might not ensure better learning performance or teaching efficiency, although various types of interactive actions were observed. The possible interpretations and suggestions for future studies are provided.