Personal Response Systems: Clickers in the Classroom

A personal response system (PRS) can enhance the classroom experience by providing instructors an electronic way of interacting with students. Through small remote devices ("clickers"), instructors can poll their students, ensure key learning points are being absorbed, take attendance, or give low-stakes quizzes. Unlike asking students to raise their hands in response to a question, with a PRS system, faculty can receive immediate classroom feedback while ensuring a student's public anonymity.

Following a six-month assessment of a number of products and vendor solutions, OID recommends the Personal Response System from GTCO CalComp. OID is currently assisting a class within the Life Sciences Core Curriculum to become among the first users of the company's new Radio Frequency (RF) system, which will provide advanced capabilities and ease of use for both faculty and students. After this large scale pilot test, we expect to introduce clickers into several additional courses in the Spring Quarter.

We have assembled a series of resources to assist faculty with adopting and learning this technology, including:

• PRS Introduction
• An overview of how the systems work
• A review of our assessment: Why GTCO CalComp?
• Successful Teaching Practices Using Clickers
• PRS Classrooms at UCLA
• Links to additional resources
• Tutorials on InterWrite PRS