Rice Expands Audience Response Systems Availability

During the spring of the 2008 academic year, the EdTech carried out a presentation for faculty and graduate students focusing on Audience Response Systems (ARS). This presentation, part of the Teaching with Technology series sponsored by IT and The Digital Media Center, sparked faculty interest in moving towards a campus-wide supported solution. As a result, he Educational Technologies team at Rice and a number of faculty members participated in a series of round table discussions and demonstrations, aimed at identifying an ARS system that would more closely fit the needs and interests of the Rice instructional community. Transcripts and documents from these round table sessions were analyzed by an independent evaluator. Based on the recommendations of the evaluator, EdTech has moved forward with the deployment of ARS in three more classrooms at Rice. The selected system was TurningPoint Technologies.

There were several factors that made TurningPoint a better choice for Rice over the other systems considered:
- TurningPoint offers the opportunity to accumulate and combine student responses, expanding the opportunities for instruction and dialog between faculty and students, while eInstruction does not.
- Turning Point offers other alternatives to participation, including a laptop based application that can serve as a clicker.
- TurningPoint offers options for side by side pre and post assessment graphing of same question to show effectiveness of lecture.
- Other systems considered require user registration of the clickers with the vendor. EdTEch was not satisfied vendor provided assurances regarding individual privacy and the sharing of student data.
- The clickers are acquired as a single purchase in the case of TurningPoint, whereas other vendors requires multiple payments by students
- Clickers from other vendors were deemed the least desirable use interface for students, more clunky and less aesthetically pleasing.

EdTech is working the Office of The Registrar to finalize the location of the deployments based on faculty needs. Please stay tuned for more.