Teachers have verbal and non-verbal tools at their disposal to formatively assess students during instruction. However, it is difficult to assess all students during instructional time. Student response systems (SRS) are becoming increasingly available in the K-12 setting and offer promise in enabling teachers to quickly gather information from more students while teaching. The purpose of this design study was to examine how high school chemistry teachers could use student response systems to facilitate cognitive engagement in their students. A rubric was developed to analyze student responses, both verbal and electronic, as either high or low cognitive engagement. Analysis showed that teachers require training support on using the SRS and several weeks worth of time to adjust teaching to use the system in a way that lets students show cognitive engagement. Often, students were best able to show cognitive engagement when the teacher paused after an SRS question and asked students about why they selected particular answers. Teachers who already value student responses while teaching are able to more easily adjust their teaching to use the SRS in ways that give indications of student cognitive engagement. A semantic differential device was administered to students in both classes to collect data on their thoughts on the SRS. Analysis of the semantic differentials showed thatstudents felt the SRS helped in increasing engagement, participation and making the lesson material easier to understand. The findings suggest that the SRS can be used as an indicator of cognitive engagement in chemistry instruction.