University of Pittsburgh - CIDDE - Center for Instructional Development&Distance Education

An SRS provides students with a wireless hand-held response pad that allows them to reply to classroom questions electronically and receive immediate feedback. Faculty can thereby engage students in course material through interactive question and answer sessions. The SRS software quickly polls students, tabulates the results, and presents the findings graphically. The types of questions programmed into the SRS are multiple choice, true/false, and rank order items.

Student response systems are also known as classroom response systems, electronic response systems, and interactive audience response systems.

Contact Michael Arenth (arenth@pitt.edu or 648-7236) in Media Services to discuss setting up and using the SRS in your classroom.

Student polling systems are composed of both hardware and software. The software is similar to presentation software that displays a question. The students respond to the question using devices similar to television remote controls that send infrared signals to a receiver attached to a computer. The computer records and displays the response from each student.

SRS Engages students in course material through survey, pretest, practice, or review questions. Classroom interaction encourages students to be prepared for each class. To maintain learners ’ attention, questions must be challenging, thought provoking, and/or stimulating.

SRS Promotes collaboration with group exercises that require students to discuss and come to a consensus, or with quiz questions that create a healthy competition.

SRS Provides instant feedback to students regarding an issue, question, or calculation. Consider using Gagne ’ s learning theory, which incorporates guidance, practice, and feedback into structured lessons.

SRS Increases communication by discussing the answers and opinions revealed in the SRS results. The SRS provides all students with an equal opportunity to respond, and faculty can take advantage of their responses to generate dialogue. Because the system can allow for anonymous responses, it is effective for sensitive questions, such as ethical, legal, and moral issues.

SRS Collects data for research or formative/summative evaluation. The SRS can be used for classroom assessments to measure students ’ preparation, understanding and/or satisfaction. Some instructors administer pre- and post- tests using SRS.

Associate Professor Ellen Cohn in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences says, "I find that the Student Response System engages the most reticent of students. It introduces an element of personal responsibility and interactivity that is otherwise difficult to achieve within a large class. ”

In the Department of Chemistry, Associate Professor Joseph Grabowski uses the SRS in large lecture classrooms. He values “the ability to get 100% of the students to respond to a question; the distribution of answers gives me a good handle on where the class is at that moment. ” Grabowski believes that students like the activity because it “gives them immediate feedback, in a non-threatening manner, about their current level of understanding. ”

CIDDE Associate Director of Instructional Technology Nick Laudato states that he is “most excited about the pre-test/post-test applications. The pretest can help students assess their entry knowledge of course topics and motivate them to resolve any deficiencies it identifies. It also helps the instructor adjust where to place emphasis or additional examples. The post-test can reinforce that students effectively mastered course content or alert the instructor that additional work may be required. ”

Figure 2: This graphic display allows instructors and students to quickly review the range of responses submitted by the class.

Media Services offers six sets of 32 hand held key pad units, six receiver units, and the SRS software serving a maximum of 128 students. Faculty can request the system be set up prior to class time, which takes about 30 minutes. One receiver is required for every 32 key pads.

If using the SRS from Media Services, faculty find it beneficial to have assistants help distribute and collect the hand held keypad units. In order to lessen their responsibility, instructors may require students to purchase the units (about $25 each). Some publishers, such as McGraw Hill, package the response units along with textbooks. To activate their units, students must register at the publisher ’s website which requires an additional fee.

Faculty integrate the SRS into their teaching at various levels. At the most basic level, faculty deliver responses to questions orally or in a PowerPoint ® presentation and view a summary of the students responses. At the more advanced level, the software can be used to show response histograms or charts and to calculate statistical analyses. It is also possible to export the response data to an Excel spreadsheet.

The article “ Effective Use of the Audience Response System ” from the Center for Education Research and Evaluation at Columbia University presents guidelines for using a SRS in classroom instruction.