Guides · Teaching
Does cold calling actually work, or does it just make students anxious?
Published: July 25, 2026·Reading time: 8 minutes
If you own a random name picker or a jar of popsicle sticks, you have probably wondered whether pulling a name out of it is quietly unkind — whether a room full of students would rather be left alone. The intuition is reasonable. The evidence does not support it.
In the most careful study on this question, Lisa Dallimore, Julie Hertenstein and Marjorie Platt tracked student comfort speaking in class across a semester in sections that cold-called frequently and sections that rarely cold-called. Comfort rose in the high cold-calling sections. It did not rise in the low cold-calling sections. Voluntary participation — students raising their hands without being asked — was also substantially higher in the high cold-calling sections, and it kept climbing week over week. Their 2013 paper in the Journal of Management Education (open full text here) is the spine of everything that follows.
The counterintuitive result has a mundane explanation. Students who know they might be called on read the material, think about it, and rehearse an answer. After a few weeks, being asked to talk in class stops being an unusual event and becomes a normal one. Cold calling, done predictably, produces the exposure that reduces the fear.
What the study actually measured
Dallimore, Hertenstein and Platt observed accounting sections that varied naturally in how much the instructor cold-called. They coded every classroom exchange for whether it was voluntary (the student raised a hand) or cold-called (the instructor named a student who had not volunteered). They also surveyed students at the start and end of the semester about their comfort speaking in class.
Three findings matter for the everyday classroom decision:
- More students participated voluntarily in high cold-calling sections. Cold calling did not crowd out volunteering. It ran alongside more of it.
- Voluntary participation rose over the semester in high cold-calling sections. The gap between high and low cold-calling classes widened as the term went on, not the reverse.
- Self-reported comfort speaking increased in high cold-calling sections and stayed flat in low cold-calling sections. Whatever discomfort students initially reported, it faded as cold calling became routine.
The dissertation by Aaron Broadwell at the University of Tennessee, "An Analysis of Voluntary and Cold-Call Student Participation", sits alongside this finding. Voluntary and cold-called responses turn out to be complements, not substitutes — classes with more of one tend to have more of the other.
The gender-equity result
Buried in the Dallimore data is one of the strongest arguments for cold calling. In low cold-calling classes, women answered fewer voluntary questions than men — a gap that has been documented in classrooms for decades. In high cold-calling classes, women answered as many voluntary questions as men. Both groups spoke more overall, but the difference between them closed.
This is one study in graduate management education, so the exact size of the effect should not be over-generalized. The mechanism, though, is easy to state. Voluntary hand-raising rewards students who are quick to speak, who read the room as inviting them to speak, and who do not worry that they will be interrupted. Structured turn-taking — including cold calling with think time — takes those social frictions out of the equation. The floor is decided by the instructor, not by who got there first.
The K-12 caveat, stated honestly
The Dallimore work is in higher education, in a specific discipline. There is no equivalent large-sample study in a K-12 classroom, and it would be a mistake to pretend there is. What does exist is a middle-school masters thesis by Kayla Weiler, "Cold Calling: The Impact on Voluntary Participation and Student Preparation" (Northwestern College), which examined a single middle-school classroom over an intervention period. The direction of her results matches the higher-ed literature — voluntary participation rose when the teacher cold-called deliberately — but it is a small study with low statistical power. Read it as corroboration, not proof.
For K-12 teachers, the practical takeaway is that the scaffolding matters more than the label. Predictable, well-cued cold calling in a fourth-grade room is a different thing from a teacher spinning a name picker to catch a student who is looking out the window. The former is what the research is about. The latter is not.
How to cold call well
Every study that finds a benefit finds it in classrooms where cold calling is predictable and scaffolded. The instructor does not surprise students; the instructor sets the rules and then follows them. A short checklist:
- Tell students on day one that cold calling happens, and why. Explain that everyone will be called on and that preparation, not luck, is what makes it feel fine. Predictability is the whole game.
- Ask the question first, then pause, then name a student. Five to seven seconds of silence is not awkward — it is think time. Every student is now working on the answer, not just the one whose name is coming.
- Allow a pass with a return. "Pass" is a valid answer. Come back to that student after two or three more responses, once they have heard classmates think out loud. The message is not "gotcha" — it is "your turn is coming."
- Pitch the question to the student when you can. A recall question for a student who is still building confidence; an application question for one who is not.
- Spread calls across the room. A visible pattern of even distribution — the front row, the back corner, the quiet cluster near the windows — is more powerful than a single name picked at random. Tools like the Random Pair Generator can also spread participation by structuring who talks to whom before anyone speaks to the whole class.
- Never use cold calling to catch inattentive students. If a student is not paying attention, address that directly. Turning cold calling into a punishment poisons the practice for the whole room and forfeits the research base.
Random selection versus strategic selection
A random name picker and a jar of sticks do the same thing: they take the choice out of your hands. That is both their strength and their limitation.
Random selection buys equity of voice. Every student has the same probability of being called on, which quietly rules out the unconscious patterns that even careful teachers fall into — calling on the front row, the students they made eye contact with last, the students whose names they remember first. Over a semester, the distribution flattens. The Random Name Picker and a well-shaken jar of sticks are equivalent on this point.
Strategic selection buys precision. You know your students. You know that Ana has been quiet for two weeks and needs a question she can succeed on, and that Jamal read the appendix and can carry an ambitious question further than anyone else in the room. A random draw cannot see any of that; it will hand the ambitious question to Ana half the time.
The two approaches are not opposites, and most teachers who cold call well use both. A common pattern: default to random selection to protect equity, combine it with a few seconds of think time so any student called can attempt the question, and reserve strategic selection for moments when the fit between the question and the student really matters. If you are going random, protect the draw with the "pass with a return" rule so a student who is genuinely stuck is not stranded — and note who passed, so you can circle back with an easier prompt before the end of the period.
Where the AnchorKite Random Name Picker fits
The Random Name Picker is the free way to make selection genuinely random. Paste or type your roster, spin, and it draws a name. It runs entirely in your browser — no accounts, no logins, no roster leaves your device. Closing the tab clears it. If you want to keep participation spread across the room in group work, the Random Pair Generator handles pairings the same way. Both are part of the Teacher Tools hub.
Try the Random Name Picker the next time you cold call. Pair it with a five-second pause, a pass-with-return rule, and one week of consistent practice. Watch what happens to voluntary hand-raising by Friday.
Looking for more classroom tools? Browse the Teacher Tools hub.
Sources and further reading
- Dallimore, Hertenstein and Platt (2013), "Impact of Cold-Calling on Student Voluntary Participation," Journal of Management Education — the core study cited above for rising comfort, higher voluntary participation, and the narrowed gender gap in high cold-calling sections.
- Open full-text copy of the Dallimore, Hertenstein and Platt study (PDF) — the same paper, no login required.
- Weiler, "Cold Calling: The Impact on Voluntary Participation and Student Preparation" (Northwestern College masters thesis) — the K-12 corroboration cited above. Small, single-classroom study; treat as directional evidence, not confirmation.
- Broadwell, "An Analysis of Voluntary and Cold-Call Student Participation" (University of Tennessee dissertation) — cited above for the broader finding that voluntary and cold-called participation function as complements rather than substitutes.
FAQ
Does cold calling make students more anxious over time?
The best available evidence points the other way. Dallimore, Hertenstein and Platt tracked student-reported comfort speaking in class across a semester and found that in classes where the instructor cold-called frequently, comfort increased. In classes where the instructor rarely cold-called, comfort stayed flat. The mechanism appears to be preparation and practice: students who expect to be called on read the material and rehearse answers, and speaking becomes routine rather than exceptional.
Does cold calling actually get more students to participate voluntarily?
Yes. In the same study, sections with high rates of cold calling had substantially more voluntary hand-raising than sections with low rates of cold calling — and the voluntary rate kept climbing across the semester. Cold calling does not replace voluntary participation; it appears to seed it.
Does cold calling help close gender gaps in participation?
In the Dallimore, Hertenstein and Platt data, women in low cold-calling classes answered fewer voluntary questions than men. In high cold-calling classes, women answered as many voluntary questions as men. Both groups participated more overall, but the gap closed. This is a study in graduate management education, so treat the size of the effect as suggestive rather than settled for every setting, but the direction is consistent with the broader theory that structured turn-taking helps students who are otherwise talked over.
Does the research apply to K-12 classrooms?
Directly, no — the core Dallimore studies were conducted in undergraduate and graduate management courses. A smaller masters thesis by Kayla Weiler at Northwestern College examined cold calling in a middle school setting and reported similar directional results: voluntary participation rose. It is a single small study and should be read as corroboration, not confirmation. K-12 teachers who want the same benefits should keep the scaffolding — advance warning, think time, appropriately pitched questions — and monitor their own students.
How do I cold call without making it a gotcha?
Tell students on day one that cold calling happens and why. Ask the question first, then pause five to seven seconds so the whole class thinks, then name a student. Allow a pass with a return — the student can say pass now and you will come back to them after two more responses. Vary the difficulty of the question so it fits the student. Do not use cold calling to catch inattentive students. The evidence is about predictable, scaffolded cold calling; punitive cold calling is a different practice and should not claim these benefits.
What is the difference between random and strategic selection?
Random selection — what a name picker or a jar of sticks does — gives every student an equal chance and removes unconscious bias about who gets asked. Strategic selection lets you match the question to the student, which is useful when a specific student has relevant background or when you want to give a struggling student a question you know they can answer. Random gets you equity of voice; strategic gets you precision. Many teachers alternate, or use random selection with think time so any student called can handle the question.
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