U N I V E R S I T Y  O F  P I T T S B U R G H

Volume X, Number 2

Electronic Response Systems Available from Media Services

By Barbara Frey & Dan Wilson
CIDDE

Student response systems, also known as classroom, electronic, and interactive audience response systems, provide students with a wireless, hand-held pad that allows them to electronically reply to classroom questions 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 graphically presents the findings. The types of questions programmed into the SRS are multiple choice, true/false, and rank order items.

Student polling systems are made up of two general parts, hardware and software. The software is similar to presentation software that displays a question. The students respond with devices similar to television remote controls that send infrared signals to a receiver attached to a computer. The computer records and displays the response.

The SRS quickly summaries student responses to an in-class question.

The SRS can help faculty achieve the following goals:

1. Engage students in course material through survey, pretest, practice, or review questions. The resultant interactive classroom encourages students to come to class prepared. However, to achieve this interaction and maintain learners’ attention, questions must be challenging, thought provoking, and/or stimulating.
2. Promote collaboration with group exercises that require students to discuss and come to a consensus or to answer quiz questions that create a healthy competition.
3. Provide instant feedback to students regarding an is- sue, question, or calculation.
4. Increase 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.
5. Collect 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.

Faculty integrate the SRS into their teaching at various levels. At the most basic level, faculty deliver the response question 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.

What are faculty saying about the 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.”

Nick Laudato, CIDDE associate director of instructional technology, 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.”

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

Faculty can obtain further information and arrange to use an SRS by contacting Michael Arenth, arenth@pitt.edu or 412-648-7236 in CIDDE Media Services.

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.

When 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 package the response units along with textbooks. To activate their units, students must register at the publisher’s Web site which requires an additional fee.

Additional information:

The article “Effective Use of the Audience Response System” from the Center for Education Research and Evaluation at Columbia University presents guidelines for using an SRS in classroom instruction.
www.library.cpmc.columbia.edu/cere/web/facultyDev/ARS_handout_2004_tipsheet.pdf
The Teaching Exchange from Brown University interviews two professors on how they use the SRS in “Assessment and Student Response System.”

A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh

Center for Instructional Development & Distance Education
1996-2004 © University of Pittsburgh, CIDDE. All Rights Reserved.
Editor: Carol DeArment, Production: Joyce Walsh
Questions or comments, please contact CIDDE Webmaster, 12/08/2004