Student Response Systems

[Stephanie Cheney]

Forgive the cross-post: One of our departments is interested in using a student response system for big lectures so I’m researching which might be the best to implement here at WIT.

"The terms classroom response system, classroom communication system, wireless response system, and interactive response sytem are used interchangeably. The term refers to a software/hardware system that allows instructors to easily get instant feedback from their students, using remote control devices and a portable receiver.The basic process works like this: Students are shown a question and they respond by pressing a button on their remote control (clicker). Responses are tallied by computer and feedback is instantly available in the form of histograms and detailed reports.” From UTexas

There are many variables to consider…price, hardware, software (Mac & PC), do students buy their own remote (clicker) or are they provided by the Institute, integration with BlackBoard CMS, support, etc. Much like video conferencing software, it seems that these companies merge often. I’m looking for your experiences here…what SRS do you use? Why? What do your faculty say about using the systems?

[Steve Mackenzie]

Hi Stephanie,

Had a demo from a keepad rep after one of the tutors in our faculty invited him along. She has previously worked with keepad and rated it. I thought it was excellent and we are due for a trial run out at a conference workshop in May. In this case the institution buys a licence for a certain number of remote controls. The tutor can carry around 100 remote controls easily, so its portable. try the website, see what you think http://www.keepad.com/

All content is developed in powerpoint, once you have added the keepad menu.

Steve

[Stephanie Cheney]

Thanks for sharing Steve, that's good info. I cross-posted on my blog and got this response from Jeff Vyduna:
Hi Stephanie,

I’ve been doing a lot of research on the various SRSs lately. They tend to be expensive, around $30-$40 per clicker for a capable system. I perceive the leaders to be TurningPoint, Interwrite PRS, and Quizdom. For a little more money, smart classrooms systems like Promethean Activote and SMART Senteo are available. There’s just tons available however: H-ITT, iRespond, Quicktally, iClicker, Optivote…. and I haven’t even mentioned the ones aimed at businesses!

I’m a student at MIT. The high cost of clickers motivated my friends and I to build PollEverywhere.com. It uses student cell phones as clickers. Students pay only normal text messaging charges, about $.01 per response. We priced it to be free for K-12, but it always comes out cheaper than hardware, usually at about 10% of the cost. We don’t have all the features you’ll find in TurningPoint, but many professors find they don’t end up using all the feature anyway. A professor at the University of Florida uses Poll Everywhere prolifically for 3 sections of about 180 students each. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more about it, or any of the other SRSs out there.

http://polleverywhere.com/

I love the idea-my students have a cell phone on them at all times, why not put those things to use in an educational setting...

[John Thompson]

Check out this info -

http://at.its.uiowa.edu/prs/index.shtml

TLT Group Webcast Archives for November 2, 2007 & March 7, 2008 at: http://www.tltgroup.org/tlt-swg/FL!/FL!past.htm

[Wayne]

Hello Stephanie,

We are currently using Turning Technologies clickers. We have purchased several kits of 35 devices, which faculty sign out to use in their classrooms.

Here are a few resources that you may find helpful.

http://moourl.com/a6jxg - Carnegie Mellon University White Paper on PRS
http://moourl.com/si142 - Derek Bruff has a nice collection of resources regarding PRS

Wayne

[Brandy]

Hi Stephanie,
Sorry for the late response but I hope this information might still be helpful. Our faculty development office researched classroom response systems last summer and went with the iclicker: http://www.iclicker.com/. We had several vendors come and do a demonstration.

We went w/ iclicker because of ease of use and because the software for the iclicker is kept on a usb drive - to run the iclicker response system you just plug in that usb drive and you don't have to install anything to the network. Knowing that we would implement this small scale we didn't want anything that would require software installed to every classroom podium or to the network.

Our department bought six sets of these, the base & software and 30 clickers for each set. We are providing training through our department for faculty interested in using them and then have located the sets at the academic department offices for checkout after arranging a schedule based on which faculty want to use them. The faculty member assigns a clicker based on the clicker id # to the student's name - each class session the student comes up to the front of the room and gets their clicker. Long term if the clickers are popular enough, we'll offer them through the bookstore and the student can purchase one clicker (w/ one unique id #) that they can use in all of their classes.

The system is very easy to use and it works well with PowerPoint or any other software - the iclicker software sort of sits on top of ppt or whatever you're using and it takes a screenshot to associate the recorded response with whatever you have on the screen. The iclicker gradebook software can be set-up for BB, WebCT, moodle - so that you can easily import the results into your BB gradebook. We had about 12 faculty use it in the Spring and the feedback was all positive.
Brandy