‘Ask the Audience’- Using an Audience Response System in Higher Education – the experience so far in National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Introduction

Many television viewers will be familiar with the phrase ‘Ask the Audience’, an option provided to the audience of a particular quiz show who are invited to give their answer anonymously to a question in order to assist a struggling contestant. In this context the ‘audience response system’, is used as a tool for interaction and polling group reaction. Aside from quiz shows this technology has gained a foothold in the world of commercial and corporate training where it facilitates immediate feedback to the trainer on the level of understanding and/or satisfaction of the participants. In the past number of years the potential for application of this technology in higher education has been identified as a tool for engaging students and encouraging participation, particularly in large groups. As the cost of the technology continues to move to a reasonable level, this system of facilitating student interaction and immediate feedback in the classroom may become more common in higher education.

Audience Response Systems – a user’s guide

A word on terminology

Audience Response Technology or Audience Response Systems, as noted by Murphy and Riddle, are also referred to as ‘Student’ or ‘Classroom’ Response Systems. Within Higher Education in the UK and the USA they are commonly referred to as Personal Response Systems (PRS) (Murphy and Riddle, Elliott).

Audience Response Systems – how they work in simple terms

Audience Response Systems allow a teacher or facilitator to ask a group of students a question and to gain a response from that group through hand-held wireless transmitters or handsets, which look similar to a TV remote control. The practical working of the system is explained in the following example. At the beginning of a class the teacher ensures that each student has a handset. Through a laptop, with the appropriate software and connected to an LCD projector, the teacher poses a multiple-choice question (MCQ), to the class, which is displayed via the projector and asks the students to respond using their handsets. The question is followed by a list of potential answers each with a corresponding number. The teacher next asks the class to push the button on their handsets that corresponds to the number associated with their answer. As the students vote on their handset a radio or infrared wave (depending on the system) is sent to a receiver which gathers and aggregates the results. This receiver is connected to the teacher’s laptop which is in turn connected to the projector. Thus as the votes are being cast both teachers and students can see the votes accumulating on the screen in the ‘Votes Cast’ box. Once all votes are received the teacher can choose to display the results on the laptop and, through the connected projector, share these results with the students. This information can be displayed in different formats, using actual numbers or percentages and graphs/charts.

A brief summary of two explorations of Audience/Personal Response Systems in other HE institutions

Though the use of this technology remains relatively uncommon at present, there is some literature published on the subject. This section of this paper will explore the experience of two educators who have encountered this technology.

‘Using a PRS in Economics Teaching’

Caroline Elliott of the Department of Economics in Lancaster University has documented her experience of using what she terms the PRS (Personal Response System) with second-year undergraduate students on a course which allowed for comparison between the employment of PRS assisted teaching and traditional methodologies. Elliott’s rationale behind using PRS focused on three ideas i.e. that PRS could ‘enhance a lecturer’s ability to monitor students’ understanding of lecture material; provide an opportunity for students to engage in active learning; and boost students’ concentration levels at times when they might otherwise flag in lectures’ (Elliott).

Elliott found that using the PRS did indeed provide ‘a very useful means of checking students’ understanding of material covered, both quickly in the lectures and also after the lecture’ (Elliott). She also discovered that PRS offered students ‘an easy method of gauging their own understanding, and comparing their performance against that of their peers’ (Elliott). Elliott also found that the PRS had a very significant effect on students’ performance in lectures, ‘stimulating their interest and concentration, as well as their enjoyment of lectures. It has proved to be an excellent method of encouraging active learning, whilst offering a means of varying the stimuli received by students in a lecture environment’ (Elliott). Another benefit which Elliott identified was that using the PRS allowed her to pace her classes more closely to the pace of the students’ understanding, and that despite fears that the technology might not be entirely reliable, during her use of the PRS she experienced the contrary. Likewise students found the use of PRS both enjoyable and beneficial. Elliott noted that further research on the use of PRS would contribute to the debate particularly regarding its value in more discursive contexts.

‘Electronically Enhanced Classroom Interaction’

Draper’s paper Electronically enhanced classroom interaction notes a number of incidences in which PRS might be used in HE. Draper cites the following items amongst the main pedagogic categories of use of Audience Response Systems:

  • assessment, both formative and as practice for summative assessment.
  • formative feedback on learning within a class (i.e. within a contact period).
  • formative feedback to the teacher on the teaching i.e. "course feedback".
  • on-the-spot peer assessment
  • to initiate a discussion using carefully chosen MCQ’s.

Draper notes that in considering large classes in large lecture theatres, ‘the main problem is usually analysed as to do with the lack of interaction and the consequent extreme passivity imposed on the audience’ (Draper, 2002). Draper suggests that audience response equipment offers teachers a way of tackling this weakness by allowing learners to actively participate in the lecture by generating answers, providing real feedback to the teacher and potentially affecting the course of what happens. Draper also notes that the anonymity offered by the equipment ‘addresses the shyness that additionally inhibits any interaction’ (Draper, 2002). He notes in addition that ‘The biggest learning gains … are likely to come from the much better and quicker feedback from learners to teachers, allowing better attunement of the delivery; and from the method of teaching by questions’ (Draper, 2002).

In his discussion Draper explores whether this equipment is an improvement on students giving a ‘show of hands’ or voting with a card – he concludes that the speed, accuracy and particularly the anonymity allowed by audience response equipment are the key benefits, the latter especially with a new group.

A synopsis of the ways in which the Audience Response System has been used to date in NUI, Maynooth

NUI Maynooth has invested in 40 ‘OptionFinder’ radio-wave handsets and one receiver, all of which are portable. The software currently being used with the handsets is called ‘ppvote’. This software works through MS PowerPoint and functions most efficiently on a ‘Windows’ operating system. To date the Audience Response System has been used in two contexts in NUI Maynooth - in a classroom situation and as part of Staff Training and Development. In these contexts the equipment was used variously:

  • to gain some knowledge of the group – questions such as age, gender, staff group, prior experience/knowledge of topic being discussed; Draper calls this ‘Community Building’ synopsised by Williams as ‘General questions, for example why students chose this particular class, [to] create a sense of mutual awareness within the group’ (Williams, 2002)
  • to initiate a discussion
  • to record research information/feedback anonymously e.g. through a survey using the equipment
  • to provide feedback on learning, particularly regarding understanding of content
  • as a revision tool of a lesson or unit
  • to facilitate an active learning environment
  • for formative assessment purposes through the use of MCQ’s.

An outline of findings to date and recommendations based on the NUI Maynooth experience of use of this equipment.

Because NUI Maynooth has just begun to use this equipment, and has not had opportunity to widely implement it, a good deal of research needs to be carried out before conclusive statements regarding the effectiveness of the system can be made. However, at this stage we feel confident enough to make some comments on the effectiveness of the system.

NUI Maynooth’s findings regarding the use of audience response equipment echo those of users in other Higher Education settings. In general we have found that students and staff who have used the system like it and are keen to continue to use it. The anonymity afforded by the system is particularly valuable – this was noted both in a Staff Training and Development context, and in a teaching and learning environment. Regarding the former, where the equipment was used as an evaluation tool at the end of a workshop or a unit of learning, it allowed participants to provide instant honest feedback, without the need to openly criticise a facilitator. Regarding the latter, it is particularly difficult to get students to volunteer answers or ‘guess’ in a classroom situation, especially if the students are relatively new to the university or the teacher – the risk of ‘getting it wrong’ or appearing foolish in front of peers and the teacher are too great – thus even a show of hands can be intimidating. The anonymity of the audience response system allows students to guess, honestly in a ‘safe’ environment without the threat of being singled out for getting the wrong answer. This is, we believe, a major benefit of the system.

We have also noticed that the equipment is used to best effect when the answers displayed following ‘voting’ by students or participants, are discussed by the group. Where this does not happen and the voting equipment is used frequently in the class, one can actually lose interaction, as both teacher and students, focus ‘passively’ on a screen.

Similar to Elliott’s findings we have found that using the PRS has provided a very good means of checking students’ understanding of material covered. Having this type of feedback has allowed staff using this equipment to make adjustments to the content presented in order to target areas with which students appear to be having difficulty. We have also found that students find it interesting to see their responses displayed almost instantaneously – this is both enjoyable and engaging and may for some students be motivational. The equipment has thus provided a more active learning environment for students and employment of the equipment introduces methodological variety. Another benefit for NUI Maynooth students, which was also pointed out by other HE users, is that both the teacher and the students get to know the distribution of responses and how their own personal response relates to that distribution. This allows students the opportunity to monitor, anonymously, their progress relative to the class.

Students and participants have been very happy using the equipment so far. Because they have had limited exposure to the system to date, the ‘novelty’ of the equipment may be contributing at present to the overall positive feedback which the equipment has received. Caution though regarding ‘over-kill’ was noted by staff using the equipment; like any other tool it could become overused, common-place and potentially boring for students. From our experience we see audience response equipment as just another tool in the repertoire of a teacher or facilitator.

Regarding the practicalities of using the equipment a couple of comments should be made. Though the portability of the hardware allows flexibility, lumbering a number of handsets, a receiver, a laptop and quite possibly an LCD projector to a classroom can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Equally, if the equipment needs to be set up in a room prior to the class beginning this demands that either both the teacher and the room are free for the previous class period, or that some teaching time is devoted to setting-up the room. The ideal scenario may be that certain rooms are equipped for this equipment with the handsets and receivers being in-built in the ‘infrastructure’ of the room; or, alternatively, the receivers are fixed in a room and each student is responsible for their own handset, which they bring to class. In such a room if the LCD projector was also fixed, the teacher/facilitator would only need to bring their laptop, or where a room had a PC, their disc, to the classroom. This appears to be a preferable solution to over-burdening an already often laden-down teacher!

Regarding the software – staff have had some teething problems with the software but all have managed to work with it to produce useable material.

Conclusions

NUI Maynooth is looking forward to continuing to use the audience response system in future teaching and staff development contexts. We will continue to monitor this use and are anxious to record our experiences so as to contribute to the research in this area.

References

Draper, S. (2002). Electronically enhanced classroom interaction, [Online], Available from:

Elliott, Caroline, (no date). Using a Personal Response System in Economics Teaching, [Online], Available from: LTSN International Review of Economics Education,

Hilliard Jason, (no date). Enhancing Your Presentations with the OptionFinder® Audience Polling System, [Online], Available from: University of Colorado,

Murphy, Patrick and Riddle, Randy, (no date). Interactive Learning Tools and Techniques: Personal Response, [Online], Available from: Duke University,

Seenan, G. (2000) Ask the audience – the way to a better degree, [Online], Available from: The Guardian

Williams, David, 2002. As seen on TV, [Online], Available from: The Guardian,