E-learning

Personal Response Systems

What are they?

Synonyms: audience response systems; group response systems; electronic voting systems; clickers

These are systems where students have a wireless handset - like a TV zapper - which allows them to vote in response to a multiple choice type question posed by their lecturer.

The possible answers and a summary of the responses are displayed graphically on a PC screen (which can be projected so that all the students can see).

Such systems typically comprise:

handsets or transmitters for students
receivers installed in classrooms
software
a PC

The pedagogic benefits are:

interaction promotes active learning
immediate feedback to the lecturer on how well students are understanding concepts
quick and easy formative feedback which promotes deeper learning
they can be used on a large scale to give individual feedback to students on their knowledge and understanding

There are many ways of using clicker technology in different settings and for different purposes and the page on using PRS clickers in your teaching outlines some of the reasons you might want to use them and ways in which you can make the most of their functionality. There are also some clicker alternatives which serve similar or related functions and amy be more useful for your context.

Staff can borrow sets of 'clickers' from the Teaching and Learning Development Unit, which also runs events to demonstrate their use.

You can also access a range of tutorials from TurningPoint whose system we are using at Sussex.

The University of Edinburgh has produced an accessible 'brief introduction to why you might want to use clickers and how to use them effectively' based on their experience. This includes links to relevant literature.

You can see and hear Derek Bruff, a leading writer on the use of clickers, giving a keynote presentation on Motivating Engagement and Learning Using Classroom Response Systems at the 2010 Engaging Students Through In-Class Technology (ECSTICT) conference. Or you can read his book Teaching with Classroom Response Systems which is held in the TLDU library.

Andrew Dent's presentation Engineering adventures through Audience Response Systems is also useful, but you will need Microsoft Silverlight to view it

The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard hosts a video demonstration of Teaching with Personal Response System 'clickers' in Physics by Professor Eric Mazur and a helpful guide to good question design.

Away from the sciences, this video from the Strathclyde University looks at using clickers in a French course.