Número 13 / ABRIL, 2021 (19-37)
19
Número 13 / ABRIL, 2021 (19-37)
martoledos@udec.cl
Universidad del Bío-Bío, Departamento
de Estudios Generales, Concepción,
Chile.
ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3816-8477
claudiodiaz@udec.cl
Universidad de Concepción, Facultad de
Educación, Departamento de Currículum
e Instrucción, Concepción, Chile.
ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2394-2378
Recibido:
(25/04/2020)
Aceptado:
(16/06/2020)
María José Toledo Soto
Claudio Heraldo Díaz
Larenas
QUIZIZZ AND SMARTPHONES: WARM-
UP STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING
UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ CLASS
PARTICIPATION
QUIZIZZ Y SMARTPHONES: ESTRATEGIA
DE CALENTAMIENTO PARA MEJORAR
LA PARTICIPACIÓN EN CLASES DE LOS
ESTUDIANTES UNIVERSITARIOS
DOI:
Artículo de Investigación
https://doi.org/10.37135/chk.002.13.01
Número 13 / ABRIL, 2021 (19-37)
20
Due to the impact of the internet and technology on the millennials
generation, the teaching and learning process must be integrated by both
trends, as they can increase university students’ motivation as well as their
levels of class participation. This integration can be achieved through
potential and authentic pedagogical strategies: warm-up activities using
smartphones and a technological tool called Quizizz. The objectives of this
study were: 1) to identify if students increased their class participation after
using quizzes and smartphones as a warm-up strategy, and 2) to explore
the perceptions of the students about their level of class participation. Data
were collected with the application of three instruments (the teacher’s diary,
a classroom map, a students’ perception scale) and also a combination of
a qualitative and a quantitative data analysis. The results of this study
pointed out that all of the 47 participants improved their willingness to
participate in class. However, their own perceptions about participation did
not show any particular change. In other words, the students´ willingness
to participate in class positively changed, but their own perceptions about
participation remained the same before and after the application of these
strategies.
Keywords: Warm-up stategy, smartphones, quizizz, class participation,
univestity students.
Debido al impacto del internet y la tecnología en la generación de los
millennials, el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje debe ser integrado por
ambas tendencias, ya que pueden aumentar la motivación de los estudiantes
universitarios y sus niveles de participación en clases. Dicha integración
puede lograrse a través de una potencial y auténtica estrategia pedagógica:
las actividades de warm-up con smartphones y una herramienta tecnológica
llamada Quizizz. Los objetivos de este estudio fueron: 1) identicar si
los estudiantes aumentaron su participación en clases después del uso
de quizizz y smartphones como estrategia de warm-up, y 2) explorar las
percepciones de los estudiantes sobre su nivel de participación en clases.
Los datos se recopilaron con tres instrumentos (El diario del profesor, el
mapa del aula y la escala de percepción de los estudiantes) y se utilizó
una combinación de análisis cualitativo y cuantitativo de datos. Los
resultados de este estudio indicaron que los 47 participantes mejoraron su
disposición de participar en clases. Sin embargo, sus propias percepciones
al respecto, no revelaron ningún cambio. En otras palabras, la disposición
de los estudiantes de participar en clases cambió positivamente, pero sus
propias percepciones de participación, siguieron siendo las mismas antes
y después de la estrategia.
Palabras claves: Estrategia de calentamiento, smartphones, quizizz,
participación en clases, estudiantes universitarios.
Abstract
Resumen
Número 13 / ABRIL, 2021 (19-37)
QUIZIZZ AND
SMARTPHONES:
WARM-UP STRATEGY
FOR IMPROVING
UNIVERSITY
STUDENTS’ CLASS
PARTICIPATION
QUIZIZZ Y
SMARTPHONES:
ESTRATEGIA DE
CALENTAMIENTO
PARA MEJORAR
LA PARTICIPACIÓN
EN CLASES DE
LOS ESTUDIANTES
UNIVERSITARIOS
QUIZIZZ AND SMARTPHONES: WARM-UP STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ CLASS PARTICIPATION
Número 13 / ABRIL, 2021 (19-37)
21
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, people of all ages have access to
technological devices daily. Among all the new
technologies, mobile phones or smartphones
are doubtless, the most popular among people
around the world. Many studies support the use
of these devices in education and describe it
as “a popular learning tool” (Kiernan & Aiza-
wa 2004:80) and as “eective tools for a broad
range of educational activities” (Thornton &
Houser 2005:226).
As technology has become ubiquitous, the new
methods or techniques used inside the classroom
should not be only suitable to the students’ per-
sonal characteristics, needs or curriculums’ ob-
jectives; but also, methods should meet working
demands, requirements of new pedagogical so-
cial trends and students’ multiple intelligences.
Moreover, language learning adversities such
as: students’ lack of interest, tiredness, boredom
and personal matters along with the revolution
of technology; make teachers reconsider class-
room practices to encourage students to partic-
ipate, create, communicate, collaborate and co-
operate during the lessons.
Today’s students are all digital people, in oth-
er words, they are familiar to digital technolo-
gies and they take great advantage of the new
innovations available (Langan et al. 2016:111).
Searching for information, downloading ma-
terials, communicating, browsing and playing
games are some of the innite possibilities for
accessing this new technological world. With
this in mind, some researchers agree that “using
real world resources for teaching and learning in
the classroom can make education more mean-
ingful and relevant to our students” (McNeal &
van‘t Hooft 2006).
Inside the classrooms, the use of technological
devices is not new. A number of teachers have
discovered the benets of using and integrating
dierent tools as computers, projectors, tele-
visions, tablets or IPads into the educational
curriculum. However, research shows that mo-
bile devices can integrate and transform class-
room teaching methods across the curriculum
more easily than desktops (Sung, Chang & Liu
2016:253). According to the Telecommunica-
tions Oce in Chile (SUBTEL in Spanish),
there were 23 million cell phones in 2017 (SUB-
TEL 2017:1).
Technology has had an important role in En-
glish for Specic Purposes (ESP), including
Business English (BE) courses, which are both
“directed towards the immediate professional
or academic demands and applicable situations”
(García-Laborda & Frances-Litzler 2015:43).
Technology can also benet students’ motiva-
tion, productivity and engagement in the lessons
(Roblyer 2015:209).
Millennials are leading the ranking among the
users of mobile phones and the internet. Even
though, smartphones may be seen as a threat or a
means of distraction and danger for many teach-
ers; these new generations of Chilean students
are connected to the web during 38.5 hours per
week, where 16.3 hours of connection is via mo-
bile or smartphones (Díaz 2017:1).
A possible, meaningful and accurate procedure
for integrating technology into the classroom
and lessons, may be through the use of a strate-
gy of warm-up activities. Warm-up activities are
short activities developed for the introduction
of the lesson (Diril 2015:143). These activities
have a great impact on students’ learning and
participation in any English class.
It is suggested that, adults’ participation in high-
er education and other learning endeavors is
predicated on motivation and that adult learn-
ers are motivated by diverse factors” (Sogunro
2015:23). When warm-up activities are prepared
using technologies such as: computers, cell
phones, online videos or social media, it helps
students engage the lesson contents in accordan-
de with their needs (Cutter 2015:2).
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Quizizz, for instance, is a free pedagogical and
technological multiplayer tool for classroom ac-
tivities that allows students to practice individu-
ally or in teams with their smartphones. Quizizz
is available as an application and as a webpage,
it supports dierent devices with a browser. The
main purpose of this tool is to play or create stu-
dent-paced formative assessments in a fun and
engaging way for students of all ages, but in this
study, it was used as a tool for delivering warm-
up activities through the use of smartphones.
The main research aim of this study was to an-
alyze university students’ level of participation
in ESP lessons before and after the use of the
warm-up strategy along with smartphones and
the Quizizz tool. This aim sought specically:
1. To identify if the students increased their
class participation after the use of quizizz
and smartphones as a warm-up strategy.
2. To explore the students’ perceptions on
their level of class participation.
This paper is in the context of the research grants
FONDECYT 1191021 entitled Estudio correla-
cional y propuesta de intervención en evalua-
ción del aprendizaje del inglés: las dimensiones
cognitiva, afectiva y social del proceso evalua-
tivo del idioma extranjero, and VRID Enlace
218.003.002-10 UDEC, La evaluación del in-
glés: conocimientos, percepciones, disposicio-
nes afectivas y representaciones sociales. Una
mirada sistémica del proceso evaluativo desde
los profesores y futuros profesores de inglés, es-
tudiantes, autoridades y apoderados.
METHODOLOGY
Since it is urgent to understand and explain the
possible benets of a new teaching-learning
strategy using a technological device, this study
applied a qualitative perspective with the idea of
understanding in depth this local phenomenon
in order to obtain valuable answers for this ped-
agogical practice towards university students’
class participation engagement.
The proposed strategy was implemented on two
tertiary education groups of English students
and was framed within a participatory action
research design: a collaborative and reective
manner where the teacher and the students ex-
perienced themselves the intervention in order
to improve a specic educational problem about
their own context and practice. In support of this
argument, “the main point of action research is
to nd out more about what is going on in your
own local context in order to change or improve
current practice in that situation” (Heigham &
Croker 2009:117).
The scope of this research is descriptive since
the intention of this study was to describe in de-
tail a local issue by providing background infor-
mation about it and gathering the data after its
intervention stage (Sajjad 2016:202).
This study was conducted in a public Chilean
university. The cohort was 17 freshmen from an
elementary ESP class and 20 sophomores from
an intermediate EB class. The rst group of par-
ticipants was constituted by 8 men and 9 wom-
en and their ages ranged between 18 and 21; the
second group was conrmed by 7 men and 13
women whose ages ranged between 19 and 27.
It is important to mention that in Chile currently
it is possible to see a balance of women and men
in some of the university programs. Both groups
presented the following characteristics:
• A1 to C1 English prociency levels
according to the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages.
• Lack of motivation and interest towards
the English lessons.
• Major interest in new technologies.
• Users of smartphone devices.
• Lack of participation during the lessons.
• Participants came from the areas of En-
gineering and Business and Administra-
tion
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The criteria adopted to choose these groups
was related to students’ previous performances
and perceptions with regard to English lessons.
These two groups of students were very dicult
to encourage their class participation and were
interested in changing the lesson methodologies.
Thus, based on the specic characteristics of
both groups and the research objectives of this
study, a purposive sampling technique was ad-
opted (Etikan, Musa & Alkassim 2016:2).
The intervention lasted a week and a half, with a
frequency of three sessions of 15 minutes each.
Regarding the planned strategy, participants
had the opportunity to use an innovative tech-
nology-based strategy, where the activities were
short and created based on participants’ needs.
The general steps to join Quizizz are shown in
Figure 1 below.
At the beginning of each lesson, participants
were introduced to the Quizizz tool by asking
them to go online (https://quizizz.com/join/).
Next, they joined to the warm-up strategy by
writing a code number and a nickname on their
smartphones and then started to complete the
activities related to each lesson’s aim. Finally,
participants checked their answers by discussing
them with a partner and the whole class. In each
intervention session, a dierent warm-up activi-
ty was applied such as matching pairs, memory
games and vocabulary surveys. Figure 2 shows
the dierent warm-up activities that were ap-
plied.
Source: Own elaboration to show the steps to join quizziz
Figure 1: Steps to join quizizz and smartphones as a warm-up strategy
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The data collection techniques chosen for this
study were three mixed methods supported by
concurrent validity and proven by piloting the in-
struments with a group of participants with sim-
ilar characteristics to participants of this study.
It was proven how the instruments (The teacher
journal, The classroom map and The students’
perception scale) were actually able to predict
a possible explanation for each of the specic
objectives proposed in this study. Therefore,
the three data collection methods were applied
during the three sessions of the study.
The teacher journal was used to keep a record
of what it was observed during and after the im-
plementation of the strategy. The classroom map
was used to record participants’ interaction, il-
lustrate and compare what happened during the
dierent lessons. In addition, The students’ per-
ception scale was used to identify participants’
opinions and beliefs about their own level of les-
son participation.
A thematic analysis was used to analyze The
teacher journal as well as The classroom map.
Source: Own elaboration to show the warm-up activities
Figure 2: Warm-up activities
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For The students’ perception scale, frequency
analysis was used. To organize the data collect-
ed, the following steps were followed: 1) Famil-
iarization with the data, 2) coding, 3) searching
for themes, 4) reviewing themes, 5) dening and
naming themes and 6) writing up. On the oth-
er hand, to assure validity and capture dierent
dimensions of the data collection techniques,
the three of the instruments were triangulated
(Braun & Clarke 2006:87).
Triangulation refers to the use of multiple meth-
ods or data sources in qualitative research to
develop a comprehensive understanding of the
phenomena (Korstjens & Moser 2018:121). For
instance, in this study The students’ perception
scale was used to measure the relationship be-
tween the implementation of the use of Quizizz
and smartphones as a warm-up strategy, and
the possible changes on participants’ behavior.
At the same time, participants’ improvement on
their level of class participation was explored
using The teacher journal’s observations along
with the qualitative comments given by partici-
pants in the second section of The students’ per-
ception scale.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The data was analyzed separately according to
the specic objectives of the study.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE 1: TO
IDENTIFY IF THE STUDENTS
INCREASED THEIR CLASS PAR-
TICIPATION AFTER THE USE OF
QUIZIZZ AND SMARTPHONES AS
A WARM-UP STRATEGY.
In order to analyze if there were any changes on
the students’ participation after working with
the intervention strategy, two instruments were
used. The teacher journal served to record im-
pressions and details related to the strategy and
participants’ behaviors and attitudes in the class-
room. Besides, The classroom map was used to
register the student interactions while they were
using Quizizz. For the analysis of both instru-
ments a thematic analysis was used, showing the
most recurrent themes and sub-themes presented
during the observation process.
Table 1 shows the main theme related to the
use of Quizizz and smartphones as a warm-up
strategy and the most recurring sub-themes re-
lated to both intervention groups in the study.
The rst theme presented was the Quizizz and
smartphone warm-up strategy, where the teach-
er, along with participants registered some re-
current characteristics and sub-themes as shown
in Table 1. It is presented how many times each
group mentioned and related these sub-themes
with the Quizizz warm-up strategy.
Table 1: Use of Quizizz and smartphones as a
warm-up strategy
Source: own elaboration from the data provided
on the main themematic analysis
Regarding the impressions expressed by the
teacher, one of the most recurrent sub-themes
presented was Students’ familiarity with the
strategy as it seems that all participants were
used to working with their smartphones and
technology in their daily lives. It appears that it
was easy for them to interact with the Quizizz as
a warm-up strategy. Therefore, all of them were
willing to participate during the implementation
with no further problems.
Even though the 37 participants were part of
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26
the strategy and completed it, some of them had
some drawbacks as shown in Table 1, where stu-
dents showed some diculty with certain ques-
tions that were part of the strategy, it was also
observed that there were problems with the stu-
dents’ backwardness.
Nine students were left behind while the rest of
the participants had nished with Quizizz, so
these students had to wait for the others to end
the strategy. Even though Quizizz had a time set
for each activity, between 35 and 100 seconds to
answer each Quizizz item, some of the students
were faster than others.
Finally, it was noticed that in two occasions the
instructions given to participants might not have
been clear so they asked the teacher again in or-
der to explain it in Spanish for a better under-
standing. This situation may have occurred since
most of the students from the two groups had
a poor understanding of English and in most of
the lessons the teacher had to clarify the instruc-
tions and content in their mother tongue in order
to simplify the information given so they could
carry out the dierent activities during the les-
son.
A second theme was related to the warm-up ac-
tivities applied during the three sessions through
the technological tool Quizizz supported by
smartphones. In each of the three sessions of the
intervention, a dierent warm-up activity was
employed for both groups such as: Matching
pairs, Memory games and Vocabulary surveys,
respectively.
It seemed that even though these warm-up ac-
tivities were developed once in each group, the
students showed a dierent and better disposi-
tion to work and participate than in previous tra-
ditional warm-up activities.
Prior to the implementation of the intervention,
participants were exposed to the same warm-up
activities but their interest and level of partici-
pation were lower, possibly because they were
not attracted to them, they were afraid of partici-
pating in front of the class or they were not used
to using Quizizz in most of their other courses.
Most of their courses were lectures where they
were just seated and had to listen to their teach-
ers. The methods used to present these activities
were not appealing to their multiple intelligenc-
es or communicative needs.
It is important to note that even though The stu-
dents’ perception scale was not meant to be used
for this objective, some of the students’ com-
ments noted at the end of the scale were bene-
cial to this purpose as seen in Table 2 and Table
3.
Table 2 shows a third theme allied to the tech-
nology used during the three sessions and some
examples were extracted from the qualitative
comments that students wrote in the comment
section in The students’ perception scale. These
observations were expressed during the rst and
last day of implementation. Smartphone, WI-FI
connection and Quizizz sub-themes were recur-
rent subjects associated to the use of technology
in the classroom.
Table 2: Use of technology
Source: own elaboration from the data provided
on the secundary themematic analysis
Concerning the use of technology, three sub-
themes were mentioned as shown in Table 2.
From the participants’ perspective showed in the
students’ comment section, the pedagogical tool
Quizizz was helpful to motivate them to partic-
ipate more during the lessons, they also men-
tioned it was interesting and fun to play with it.
Nevertheless, it seemed that for some partici-
pants, that the use of this strategy with a smart-
phone may exclude some of them due to the fact
that they may not have this kind of technology
required to be part of the lesson, so they would
not be able to participate during the strategy.
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Furthermore, while the strategy was applied,
the WI-FI connection failed, thus, some of the
participants could not keep working with the
Quizizz section activities but they continued
with their partners.
With this in mind, it seems that participants’ pos-
itive perceptions about Quizizz, support the the-
sis that participants modied their behavior by
improving their willingness to participate during
the lessons. Likewise, by introducing a strategy
related to participants’ interests, they would feel
more motivated to be part of the English lessons.
However, before the strategy was applied, stu-
dents had almost no interest and did not show
any excitement to participate in the lessons.
During the observations, it could be noticed
that they were very interested in the lessons and
they encouraged themselves to continue playing
with Quizizz and smartphones used as a warm-
up strategy. As some of them mentioned in The
students’ perception scale comments, it was eas-
ier to continue with the next activity due to the
fact that the strategy introduced them to the new
vocabulary or the topic that they were going to
learn and practice in the course of the lessons.
A fourth theme was showed in relation to par-
ticipants interactions, through The classroom
map there could be identied the most recurrent
interactions that participants held during the im-
plementation of the strategy. During the three
intervention sessions per group, all participants
interacted at some point with the strategy, with a
frequency of 111 times. One of the most recur-
rent interactions was student-student (156 times)
as they were asked to work in couples and dis-
cuss their answers to each other during the inter-
vention strategy.
Finally, the student-teacher interactions were re-
lated to asking about instructions and answering
questions about the strategy at the end of Quizizz,
with a frequency of 136 times. The teacher-stu-
dent interactions occurred with a frequency of
120 times, where the teacher explained the in-
structions and answered questions.
Participants were uncommonly active in relation
to the lesson interaction while the intervention
strategy was applied. Even though participants
were usually exposed to similar activities before
the intervention, their level of interaction was
very low as they preferred doing the activities by
themselves or did them in their mother tongue.
After the use of this intervention strategy the
two groups of participants changed their willing-
ness to participate during the lesson. Participants
increased their participation compared to the
lessons before the action research intervention.
From the teacher’s observation, during the inter-
vention they seemed more comfortable, excited
and willing to work, spoke in English and shared
with the rest of the class.
Group 1 asked the teacher constantly to work
with the intervention strategy and participated
actively in the lesson. Before the intervention,
they had a low class participation since they
were A1 level students and were afraid of mak-
ing mistakes. Even though Quizizz showed how
correct their answers were, they did not feel em-
barrassed to share their answers with the rest of
the class. Similarly, Group 2 enjoyed the activ-
ities and, according to them, this allowed them
to have a better understanding of the vocabulary
and topics studied during the lessons.
In Figure 3, there is an example of The class-
room map, which was used in one of Quizizz
and smartphones warm-up strategy sessions to
identify the position of the participants in the
classroom and the interactions promoted by the
intervention strategy.
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A numberless of ideas arose from the comments
that participants gave during the application of
The students’ perception scale. Students ex-
pressed their beliefs and opinions about Quizizz
and smartphones used as a warm-up strategy, as
well as their thoughts related to their participa-
tion during the English lessons.
It could be inferred that inside the classroom,
there were dierent kinds of students with dif-
ferent needs so the reasons to explain their lack
of participation may be varied. Even within the
same group, where students were exposed to the
same conditions and content, the interests and
the students’ level of English prociency were
dierent. Table 3 shows some students’ opinions
about their feelings or impressions regarding the
English lessons.
Source: Own elaboration to show an extract of the classroom map
Figure 3: Extract from map 1 on students’ interactions (group 1-session 1)
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The rst sub-theme (Students’ participation
in the English lesson), illustrates participants’
awareness on their level of participation in the
lesson. When interpreting their comments, it
seems that some of the students felt condent in
relation to their English language prociency, so
they felt that they did not need to take part in the
lesson discussions since they mastered the activ-
ities. In contrast, there were some participants,
who felt the opposite as they were insecure of
their English skills and they manifested that En-
glish was hard for them so they could not devel-
op self- condence in language performance.
Another idea that might be connected to the pre-
vious issue may be the classroom environment
created by the teacher and classmates, where the
students may have felt anxious or insecure when
they had the opportunity to speak or connect
with others. For instance, students did not want
to participate because they were afraid of being
teased or judged by their group of peers or the
teacher.
The second sub-theme (Students’ interest in the
English lesson), describes participants’ atten-
tiveness in the English language as a reason for
motivation and engagement in the lessons. From
the comments it could be inferred that the indi-
vidual interests in the topics and learning a lan-
Table 3: Students’ comments about the English lessons
Source: own elaboration from the data provided on the secundary themematic analysis
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30
guage could be benecial in acquiring, speaking
English and participating.
The third sub-theme presented in the comment
section of The students’ perception scale was:
Benets of the use of the strategy. A number of
participants mentioned the pros of this Quizizz
strategy based on the use of smartphones. It
must be reported that the eectiveness of this
kind of strategy in an English as a Foreign Lan-
guage classroom relied heavily on the lesson
objectives, clarity of instructions and individual
students’ willingness to communicate or interact
with others.
As the students noticed that Quizizz worked as a
leading strategy for the lesson, it also enhanced
participants’ interaction, and the strategy facili-
tated the learning process possibly because of an
emotional factor while they were working with
it. Lastly, the strategy reduced the students’ anx-
iety while they worked with their classmates as
they were having fun and laughing. Thus, they
did not feel under pressure since they were all
working under the same conditions with a famil-
iar tool.
In the fourth sub-theme (Classroom interaction
after the use of the strategy), the participants
pointed out the importance of interacting in a
stress-free environment adding that they enjoyed
working with the strategy because it allowed
them to feel relaxed and participate voluntarily
and spontaneously.
Furthermore, an important topic is the possible
cultural dierence that the content of the strategy
might have presented; for instance, participants
were learning a foreign language, and the topics
were not familiar to them as it was expressed by
the students. Finally, the fth sub-theme (Cultur-
al dierences), illustrates a topic that may aect
the students’ willingness and engagement in the
lessons and the importance of adapting the les-
sons to the students’ real context to make them
meaningful, engaging, authentic and collabora-
tive, through the integration of technology and
traditional materials.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVE 2: TO EX-
PLORE THE STUDENTS’ PER-
CEPTIONS ON THEIR LEVEL OF
CLASS PARTICIPATION.
To meet this objective, The students’ perception
scale was designed according to the following
dimensions that address students’ perception on
their class participation:
1. Oral participation
2. Nonverbal attentiveness
3. Engagement
The dimensions had three statements each,
where participants had to tick their personal
choice from the three options for each statement.
The teacher addressed each dimension individ-
ually. For the analysis of both groups’ data, it
was calculated the average percentage for each
dimension, the three statements and the number
of answers categorized as: Disagree, Neutral and
Agree.
Afterwards, it was calculated the percentages be-
tween each group. The responses were convert-
ed into comparative pie chart gures before and
after the intervention as follows. Figure 4 shows
participants’ awareness and feelings about their
oral participation before and after the interven-
tion strategy.
Source: Own elaboration from the data provid-
ed on the students’ perception scale
Figure 4: Students’ perception about their oral
participation
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31
Regarding the rst dimension (Oral participa-
tion), Group 1 of participants seemed to perceive
that after the implementation of the strategy,
they had improved their oral participation in a
49%. In contrast, there was only 22% of Agree-
ment before the intervention. Nevertheless, 47%
of participants maintained themselves as Neutral
concerning Oral participation.
Group 2 of participants seemed to perceive that
after the implementation of the intervention
strategy, they had improved their Oral participa-
tion in a 42%. In other words, participants felt
less anxious to speak in English and they were
more motivated to communicate with the class.
Nevertheless, 42% of participants maintained
Neutral concerning Oral participation after the
intervention.
Figure 5 illustrates the students’ outcomes about
their Nonverbal attentiveness behaviors in the
pre and post intervention in Group 1 and Group
2.
Source: Own elaboration from the data provid-
ed on the students’ perception scale
Figure 5: Students’ perception about their non-
verbal attentiveness
Concerning the second dimension related to the
students’ self-reported Nonverbal attentiveness
that indicated involvement in the lesson, Group
1 of participants tended to Agree that after the
intervention they responded nonverbally or paid
attention to others in an 80%.
These ndings lead to conclude that playing with
Quizizz and using their smartphones helped the
students to pay more attention to the classroom
environment and lesson, as well as helped them
be more aware or interested in the lessons. Fur-
thermore, 0% percent of students Disagree with
the statement that they did not connect with the
lessons at some point or they were not involved
in participating in the English lessons.
Group 2 of participants tended to Agree before
(78%) and after (88%) the implementation that
they usually answered nonverbally or paid more
attention to the teacher or classmates. Equally
in in pre and post interventions, 0% of partici-
pants disagreed that they did not show any kind
of nonverbal response while they were in the
lesson.
Figure 6 shows perceptions of Groups 1 and 2
with respect to participants’ interest and motiva-
tion in the lesson before and after the interven-
tion.
Source: Own elaboration from the data provid-
ed on the students’ perception scale
Figure 6: Students’ perceptions about their en-
gagement in the English lessons
In the third dimension: Engagement, which is
dened as behaviors that are aligned with the
motivation to learn (Liem & Martin 2012:3); the
category Agree, slightly increased from 41% to
47% after the intervention where Group 1 was
more interested and less anxious in participating
after the intervention than before it.
Similarly, in Group 2 the category Agree in-
QUIZIZZ AND SMARTPHONES: WARM-UP STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ CLASS PARTICIPATION
Número 13 / ABRIL, 2021 (19-37)
32
creased in an 48% after the intervention strategy,
where Group 2 was more interested and less anx-
ious in participating during the lesson. However,
it appeared to happen that a small percentage of
participants maintained their Disagree responses
in relation to their lack of motivation and inter-
est in the English lessons.
Technology has become ubiquitous in daily
life and mainly in the professional sphere (De
Paz, Rodríguez, Zato & Corchado 2015:3),
which leads to the tendency of using it in the
English classrooms. When teaching English for
Academic Purposes (EAP) or ESP, the need to
use authentic materials grows in every lesson
(Bremner 2010; Evans 2012). Furthermore,
teachers have embraced that technology increas-
es the development of teaching methods as well
as students’ knowledge (Mosca, Paul & Skiba
2006:7), which seems promising to implement
in the classrooms.
In terms of the objectives of this study, the rst
major result revealed that by employing Quizizz
and smartphones as a warm-up strategy, ESP
students modied their class participation. This
nding coincides with the work of Gros, Kin-
shuk and Maina (2016) showing that students
were active in relation with their lesson inter-
action while the intervention strategy was being
applied (Gros et al. 2016:4).
One explanation for the students’ change of
behavior may be related to the warm-up activ-
ities, as preparatory time for the lesson, where
students develop a positive disposition or atti-
tude for learning (Rushidi 2013:130), just as the
participants of this study did. Moreover, it was
demonstrated in this study that students were ea-
ger to use the strategy and engage in the lessons
by actively participating as it happened also in
Rost’s (2006) and Velandia’s (2008) studies.
The percentages form the results suggested
that the use of technology, as it was the case of
Quizizz and smartphones used as a warm-up
strategy, was useful to encourage or motivate
students to participate more during the lessons.
The data was consistent with Roblyer’s (2015)
summary of research ndings in accordance
with the value and signicance of technology
for students’ productivity and engagement in the
lessons (Roblyer 2015:209).
The ndings in this study proved wrong the work
of earlier research studies (Thomas, O’Bannon
& Bolton 2013) which tended to assume that
the use of technology such as mobile devices
is disruptive for class development (Thomas et
al. 2013:295). The students in this study per-
ceived technology as an opportunity to interact
with their classmates, to share experiences and
to learn in a more enjoyable and clearer man-
ner, which allowed them to easily connect the
new contents with the rest of the lesson (Gikas
& Grant 2013:18).
Furthermore, this study revealed a major is-
sue related to the technological tool set time,
high-performance students had an advantage
regarding time in comparison to the low-perfor-
mance students, who took more time to end the
intervention strategy proposed by the teacher. In
this case, high-performance students started to
feel anxious, bored and distracted low-perfor-
mance students. It is important to declare that
the previous situation described, accounts for
both groups of students in this study.
Another major nding in this study is related
to participants’ perception on their level of par-
ticipation in the English lessons. Participants
considered that their oral participation did not
experience any change in comparison to their
performance before the strategy. This perception
persisted with no variation before and after the
intervention.
This nding may be explained by the fact that
both groups of participants were not used to
communicating orally, they spoke just when the
teacher required them to do it. As the strategy
was not monitored individually by the teacher,
participants did not feel pressure to discuss the
contents in English.
The results also suggested that participants tend-
ed to use nonverbal behaviors to communicate
during the lessons before and after the interven-
tion during the three lessons. These results coin-
cide with the results of the study of Bambaeeroo
QUIZIZZ AND SMARTPHONES: WARM-UP STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ CLASS PARTICIPATION
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and Shokrpour (2017), showing that partici-
pants engaged in this kind of mobile strategies
by working in teams, payed attention purposely
and responded with non-verbal gestures in or-
der to be understood (Bambaeeroo & Shokrpour
2017:51).
Lastly, the ndings demonstrated that partici-
pants’ perception in relation to their interest and
engagement in the lessons before and after the
intervention remained without any change (He-
in, Shewmaker & Nguyen 2017:91). Similar-
ly, researchers such as Liem and Martin (2012),
Harris (2011) and Velandia (2008) agree that en-
gagement in learning is closely related to moti-
vation, in which learners are committed to mas-
ter a task, activity or learning strategy.
In this study, participants did not perceive any
change with regard to their motivation or will-
ingness to sustain the strategy, which it was con-
tradictory to the results where students demon-
strated that they did change their behavior by
improving their willingness to participate during
the lessons.
LIMITATIONS
Despite the fact that this study achieved its aims,
there were some drawbacks presented during
the whole process of researching. Nonetheless,
before presenting the limitations of this study,
it is important to state that this is an action re-
search study and the results shown here are not
generalizable. It is important to take into con-
sideraction that action research is conducted to
nd solutions for certain pedagogical classroom
issues that need to be explored and improved;
therefore, as ndings are not generalizable, the
number of participants is not a problem for ac-
tion research. It allows to work with any number
of participants.
Firstly, the ndings of this study were restricted
by the time constraints and number of partici-
pants. Secondly, even though the groups chosen
were ESP both, they had a dierent focus on
the English lessons: Group 1 was an elementa-
ry communicative class, while Group 2 was an
intermediate communicative business class; and
there was a variety of English prociency levels
in both groups: A1 to C1.
Third, there were some technical limitations to
the widespread practice of mobile technology as
the size of the screen or accessibility and avail-
ability of the Internet connection. Since the data
was reported merely by the teacher-researcher,
there might be potential sources of bias. One in-
stance could be the selective memory that could
have inuenced the recalling of data while work-
ing on The teacher journal.
Lastly, the teacher-researcher was unable to
determine which of the three types warm-up
strategies (Matching pairs, Memory game and
Vocabulary survey) was the most accurate to
motivate students and why the students did not
perceive any change in their class participation,
even though they orally expressed that they en-
joyed the strategy.
IMPLICATIONS
Regarding the technological-educational strate-
gy topic, the results established that the Quizizz
warm-up strategy supported by the use of smart-
phones was useful to accomplish the teaching
objectives to benet participants’ level of par-
ticipation. Thus, this study presented a possible
useful strategy in order to meet similar issues
related to students’ participation in the English
lessons. It is worthwhile to expand the research
with regard to the sources that teachers use in
the lesson in order to involve innovative tools
to benet the teaching-learning process of future
generations of English students.
This study endeavors to address this topic in or-
der to clarify some misconceptions that teachers
and students may have regarding the use of tech-
nology or new strategies in the English lessons.
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In addition, interesting research questions may
arise for future studies that can be derived from
the ndings of this study, such as:
1) What are the factors that engage adults’ stu-
dents to participate orally using a technolog-
ical strategy?,
2) How the students’ motivation could be main-
tained after the use of this strategy?,
3) How this kind of innovation strategies could
be incorporated in Chilean classrooms? and
4) How to motivate anti-technology teachers to
use this technological strategies for teaching?
CONCLUSIONS
First, the ndings of a possible modication of
the students’ participation behavior after the use
of Quizizz and smartphones as a warm-up strat-
egy showed that all the students were eager to
participate because they expressed that they felt
comfortable using the strategy. Second, after the
implementation, the students showed a predis-
position to work and participate in the lessons
because the strategy was entertaining and moti-
vating for them.
Third, the students were active during and af-
ter the strategy, thus the intervention facilitated
the interactions maintenance even in the next
stages of the lessons. On the whole, participants
increased their interactions by reinforcing their
students-students collaboration while the strat-
egy was being implemented. On the same line,
eective lesson planning at the university level
is crucial to engage learners and encourage them
to participate actively in the lessons. Universi-
ty teachers have to develop the skill of lesson
planning for learners that sometimes lack the
necessary entry competences. Therefore, the use
of ICT can become an eective tool to guide stu-
dents’ learning processes in a context of well-or-
ganized and motivating lessons.
Furthermore, this research also pursued to in-
duce the students’ awareness on their level of
participation in the ESP lessons in order to in-
tegrate students in the process of learning. Most
students admitted that they usually interacted or
participated in nonverbal attentiveness behav-
iors with or without the use of the strategy, that
is to say, students preferred not to speak but to
respond with facial expressions or gestures to
express that they were paying attention to the
lesson, following instructions and understanding
the strategy and lesson content.
At the end, participants expressed that the use of
Quizziz and smartphones as a warm-up strategy
did not have an eect either on enhancing their
oral participation or their engagement in the les-
son before and after the intervention. However,
they also expressed that it happened because of
their lack of condence, shyness and indier-
ence towards the English subject matter.
Even though the results of the observation and
The classroom map showed that participants had
a slight change on their level of participation
and motivation towards the lessons, Quizizz and
smartphones as a warm-up strategy did not af-
fect participants’ performance and commitment
for the lesson before and after the implementa-
tion. It is relevant to state that participants mis-
understood the meaning of participation, most of
them believed that the basis of participation was
speaking since they did not relate participation
to nonverbal attentiveness behaviors or involve-
ment in the lesson’s activities.
After the intervention of this action research
project, it is concluded that the teacher’s role
must be redened to meet the needs and de-
mands of today’s world. Today’s teachers have
to understand the importance of making educa-
tion relevant to the students. Besides covering
the educational curriculum when planning an
educational program or preparing for a standard-
ized English test, teachers should make learning
signicant and engaging for students to be suc-
cessful in their professional and personal lives.
Because of the inuence of technology and me-
dia, students are exposed to an innite amount
of information; this overload of information may
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mean that teachers have to prepare themselves
as well as constantly update the teaching con-
tents and enhance their technological knowledge
to engage the students’ attention.
The ndings of this study can be understood as
valuable data and evidence for a similar educa-
tional context, which supports the use of a tech-
nological strategy with adults’ students. This is
relevant for students to participate during the
lessons, study hard and succeed in the process
of acquiring English. The participants of this
study recognized a change in their participation
regardless the identied limitations of this study.
Finally, there were found some disadvantages
regarding this kind of strategy such as: connec-
tivity problems, accessibility for students who
did not own a technological device as a smart-
phone and the students’ prociency in English,
which led some students to be left behind while
they were working with the strategy. Despite
these limitations, the ndings of this study are
valuable in the light of the teachers’ awareness
of these issues and possible upcoming solutions
as well as future studies in the eld.
DECLARATION OF CONFLICTS OF IN-
TERESTS: The authors declare that there are
no conicts of interest.
DECLARACIÓN DE CONTRIBUCIÓN
DE LOS AUTORES: María José Toledo Soto
(55%) y Claudio Heraldo Díaz Larenas (45%)
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