The use of the personal response systems (PRS) is more and more frequent in the university classrooms. This article addresses a pedagogical point of view describing what these systems are and try to show the existing links between these technological tools and the formative assessment. Our analysis take into account the following dimensions: 1) attendance and the student’s motivation, 2) feedback, 3) anonymity, 4) costs, 5) impact of the use of the PRS on the learning outcomes, 6) learning the environment of the SRP and the technical considerations and 7) types of items and the development of these items.