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PRS Demonstration: Ask the Audience in Your Lectures!

13th February 2008Wendy Beekes

Accounting and Finance

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PRS Demonstration: Outline

• What is the PRS?• Introducing the Clickers• Creating Lessons• Setting up a Class and Configuring Clickers• Starting a Session• Student Voting• Collecting Marks• Where Can I use the PRS?

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What is the PRS?

• Personal Response System (PRS) is a system for testing students/asking MCQ questions during class time.

• The system is very flexible and can be used for testing, checking attendance etc.

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What is the PRS?• Pedagogical benefits:

– Real time feedback for students during class time– Encourages participation and attendance at lectures– Ability to have feedback from tests almost instantaneously– Lecturer can see what students do or do not understand

and review material/provide additional support

• Cost to lecturer:– Time to familiarise yourself with technology – Writing questions– Easy to set up in LT– Downloading of reports after session

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Introducing the Clickers

• The on/off switch is on the LHS. To save batteries, the clicker goes off when there are periods of inactivity. Just press a button to ‘wake it up’

• There are ‘T’ and ‘F’ buttons for True and False questions• There are ‘A’ …. ‘E’ buttons • There are numbers buttons 1….9

After each entry on the clicker, students need to click enter [the green button with the arrow on it]

IMPORTANT: Please ensure you ask the students to switch off the clickers at the end of the session to save batteries

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Create Lesson (s) To create a lesson:-

1. From the Lessons tab, click on ‘new lesson’.

2. In the text box which appears, type in the name the lesson and change any formatting options

– Timer – increase/decrease time– Choices – I usually use 4 or 5– Font & Size– Chances – the number of times students can

change their answer

3. When you’re done click ‘ok’

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Create Lesson (s) To create a lesson:-

4. Click on ‘new question’. Select question type (MCQ, True/False etc). Here we have Multiple Choice

5. Enter the name for the question, check time for question, no of choices.

6. Type in Question.

7. Select correct answer by clicking in box (c) here.

8. Click on add.

• Interwrite PRS Software available from Add/Remove Programmes for your machine

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Create Lesson (s)

• It is possible to create a report of the questions (questions and answer options) by clicking on ‘Create report’ – exports to Export folder as .pdf format.

• It is possible to copy questions to other lessons, re-order questions.

• Create as many lessons as you wish!

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Starting a Class and Configuring Clickers

1. From the Classes tab, Click ‘New class’.

2. Enter instructor and location.

3. The Clicker type should be ‘RF’ and ‘closed’.

4. Set class ID (this is a 4 digit code which should be unique to you!) and click ‘ok’. I suggest you use the first letter of the Department and your course code e.g. I use A213

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Starting a Class and Configuring Clickers

• To have the clickers so students have to register themselves with library card ID, it needs to be closed loaner.

To do this:

• Click on RF -> Configure Clickers

• Select closed loaner

• Set class name and class ID.

• Click setup and wait for instructions to appear

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Starting a Class and Configuring Clickers

• Note: If students turn on the clicker too soon they will not get the prompt for their library card number.

• Note: You can check the number of students joined in the bottom right of the screen

5. Ask students to turn on clickers. The clickers should automatically find the class. Ask the students to press enter (green button with arrow on clicker) when the class has been found.

6. If the students have been successful on the clicker it should say ‘Join ID: 00XX Closed L Clicker’.

7. Check all the students have this on their clicker and ask the students to turn off the clickers

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Starting a Session1. From the Sessions Tab, click on New Session and

‘ok’.

2. Select the lesson you want to test from the list. Have the session on auto start questions, automatically advancing the question, with an answer grid for a test.

3. Ask the students to turn on the clickers.

4. Students will now be prompted for an ID (their library card number). They should enter the number including zeros and press enter (the green button with an arrow on it on the clicker). This can be used to track the responses at the end.

5. If they do this correctly, they will get a message saying ANS: classname

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Starting a SessionTo run the class as a test select: Autostart questions, no response grid,

don’t show if correct on clickers, no chart and automatically advance questions.

6. Click on OK and grid appears with first question. With automatically advancing questions, as soon as time runs out, the next question appears.

7. At the end of the session click the ‘x’ in the top left and save the changes to the roster when prompted to.

Note: Questions can be stopped, paused from this screen. No graph appears after each question for this set up – this is done as a test. An alternative option needs to be selected on set-up if you want this facility.

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Note on Student Voting

• Students should vote with A-E, 1 – 9 or T for true F for false.

• To record a vote, students must press the green key with the arrow on it (i.e. enter).

• Notice that any answer out of the range (i.e. a 1 or 2 instead of True or False) is recorded as invalid.

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Collecting Marks

1. First you need to create a grade book. To do this go to Gradebooks tab and select ‘new gradebook’.

2. Find the class name of your class, highlight this and click on ok.

3. To grade the answers click on Sessions tab and find the relevant session. Highlight the relevant session

4. Click on ‘mark session’ and a new screen appears. Note you can click on statistics to get some basic stats on how students have done.

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Collecting Marks

5. To add the marks to the gradebook, Click on add mark to gradebook. This uses the marking criteria set to grade the students’ answers. [You can amend this criteria if you wish]

6. Find and highlight relevant class and click on ok 7. Results then appear in a new screen.

• Note: This can be used to create a report of results (pdf format). To do this click on create report. Reports are by student, question etc.

• Note: You can also export Excel spreadsheets

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Where can I use the PRS?• To use the Interwrite PRS, hardware must be added on to the

machine by ISS technicians. Currently this is done in the following LT’s:– Biology LT – Bowland North Seminar Room 6– Elizabeth Livingstone LT– Faraday LT– Furness LT2– Fylde LT3– George Fox LT 1 & LT 5/6– Man School – All LTs

• You can’t add on the hardware yourself and it won’t work unless this is done .

• Book a job with the Helpdesk if your room isn’t here [mention to the helpdesk that Remedy Job #41876 has instructions for fixing it in the last log entry]

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Conclusions

• What is the PRS?

• How to use it • Any questions?