This older blog for eInstruction’s PRS is being phased out.
Please visit our new blog space for up-to-date information about audience response system “clickers” on the UMass Amherst campus!
http://blogs.umass.edu/ars
Campus PRS Users -
I am writing with an update on the Audience Response System (ARS) evaluation project I emailed you about in December 2010. I am pleased to announce that the evaluation committee has completed its work and recommended that the Office of Information Technologies (OIT) begin supporting i>clicker starting in Fall 2011. i>clicker will replace eInstruction’s PRS as the centrally-supported ARS at UMass Amherst.
Over the past several months, the evaluation committee and pilot testers examined the features sets of the top three systems on the market: i>clicker, Turning Technologies, and PRS. The committee concluded that, compared with the current system, i>clicker will provide the campus with a more reliable technology, simpler and more intuitive software and hardware, and superior customer support. For more details, see the Audience Response System Evaluation Report post.
The decision to move to i>clicker comes as we try to address ongoing stability and support issues with PRS. We are confident that the transition to i>clicker will allow us to spend less time on day-to-day technology issues and more time on teaching and learning about the innovative ways ‘clickers’ can be used in the classroom.
Similar to PRS, i>clicker will provide all instructors who choose to utilize i>clicker with a receiver, software, and an instructor remote. OIT will also be installing receivers in the classrooms on campus where clickers are often used.
If you want to use i>clicker with your Fall 2011 course, we encourage you to place your order with the Textbook Annex. Students will be able to purchase i>clicker remotes from the Textbook Annex for less than the PRS remotes.
OIT/Academic Computing will provide instructors with workshops and one-on-one consultations on the use of i>clicker over the course of the summer. We’ll also be emailing you with information on the progress of the transition as the spring and summer progress. For updates and documentation (as it becomes available) please visit: http://blogs.umass.edu/ars
For questions or if you would like to see demonstration of i>clicker, please email ars@oit.umass.edu.
Sincerely,
John Dubach
Chief Information Officer
The Spring 2011 Audience Response System (ARS) Pilot is drawing to a close. The Advisory Committee compiled information during the last several months from the pilot, peer institutions, and supporting staff. On March 21st, the Committee delivered a recommendation to our CIO to adopt i>clicker as our centrally supported ARS.
In February, as part of an ongoing evaluation, we distributed a survey to the UMass Amherst audience response system (PRS) user community. We had 44 respondents from the list of 230 users. Here is a summary of the results:
Course Size
Faculty have an average of 222 students in each class/section that they teach using PRS, with 35 being the smallest number reported and 475 being the largest.
Operating System
77.3 % of faculty use Windows operating systems, 25% use Mac operating systems, and 2.3% use both.
Satisfaction
The overall level of satisfaction with our currently supported PRS system is concerning, with a significant 47.6% instructors reporting being somewhat or very dissatisfied. This matches a similar level of dissatisfaction that we have seen among faculty who seek out support for PRS through the Instructional Media Lab and is what led us to evaluate other audience response systems.
Common Issues
Based on a list of possible issues that faculty experience with PRS, the largest number of respondents cited sometimes having problems with:
• Students unable to submit answers — 25
• The PRS software crashing/freezing during class — 23
• Issues with running PRS when multiple programs are open — 19
• Students reporting problems you can’t track — 15
• Delays in opening the PRS software — 14
• The PRS software running exceedingly slow — 13
• Losing data from a PRS Session —13
• Not being able to merge students/IDs — 12
It is significant that 25 of the 42 responses notes sometimes having students unable to submit answers, while 23 responses cited the PRS software crashing/freezing during class.
How Instructors Would Like To Use PRS
If faculty were not limited by issues with the stability and flexibility of PRS, the types of questions they would like to use are as follows (Note: A significant 24 out of 43 responses cited the desire to have students enter numeric answers.):
We asked what instructors would like to do with PRS that is not currently possible. A sample of their responses:
• “The ability to integrate online, web-based submissions of answers by students who bring their laptops/smartphones but forget their clicker.”
• “It would be interesting if it could be used for exam administration, but that would require a monumental leap in terms of stability and reliability (and authentication/verification/logging).”
• “Better text entry. Twitter-like responses would be very useful.”
• “Being able to know the profile of the student answers, such as: freshman vs. sophomores; in my major vs. no in my major; prior experience in this topic vs. no experience; etc.”
• “I would use text entries more to foster communication than for assessment, so some innovative ways to process text entry (such as word clouds) would be great.”
Please join us for a discussion with the four faculty members that are participating in the current Audience Response System (clicker) Evaluation.
Date: Monday February 28th, 2011
Time: 11:30-12:30 (lunch provided)
Location: LGRC A215
This will be an opportunity to hear first-hand about the three clicker systems under consideration (PRS, iClicker, and Turning Technologies), ask questions, and offer your input.
Space is limited, so please let us know if you’ll be attending by contacting Ann Garstka at garstka@oit.umass.edu.
We look forward to seeing you.
This semester, Spring 2011, we are running a pilot to evaluate and explore the future of Audience Response Systems (clickers) on campus. In addition to the current system (eInstruction Response a.k.a “PRS”) we are testing products from Turning Technologies and iClicker.
Four faculty members are participating in the pilot: Beatrice Botch, Nathalie Lavoie, Donna Spraggon, and Catherine Lowry West. The committee will be hosting a forum in mid-March to discuss the three systems and will be making a recommendation for the Fall 2011 semester shortly thereafter to the CIO and Provost.
As part of this effort, we have also delivered a short survey for instructors who use PRS to give us feedback about their experiences. We will be posting the results on the PRS blog shortly, so stay tuned!
If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions please contact JC Sawyer at sawyer@oit.umass.edu.
In the next few weeks, a new advisory committee will be meeting to develop recommendations on the future direction of OIT-supported Audience Response Systems (“clickers”) on campus.
This advisory group is made up of faculty and staff and is charged with reviewing the available options and collecting input from the campus community.
“Clickers” are being utilized by more than sixty UMass Amherst faculty and approximately 5,000 students per semester. Due to substantial dissatisfaction with our current product, eInstruction’s PRS, we have been exploring other systems and have identified a number of competitive options.
Our advisory committee will begin work immediately and provide recommendations by the middle of the Spring 2011 semester. Our goal is to have a decision in place soon enough to smoothly roll out a new audience response system for Fall 2011 if any of the available options is deemed superior to the current system.
There will be multiple opportunities for faculty to review our options and provide feedback. If you have thoughts on this issue and would like to submit them now, please add a comment below or email JC Sawyer at sawyer@oit.umass.edu.
Thank you for your attention to and input on this important matter.
Sincerely,
John Dubach
Chief Information Officer
(This letter also sent to faculty via email.)
As we enter in to the new semester, there is a new version of PRS Response (6.56) on the eInstruction site. However, there have been some reports of “slowness” with the new software at another campus which uses PRS.
I am a big fan of sticking with whatever works. If you have used 5.22, stick with it. If you have used 4.42, stick with it. We have not yet seen the reported slowness in our installation of 6.56; if you have used it and seen problems (or not) let us know in the Instructional Media Lab (instruct@oit.umass.edu, 545-2823).
—
More details:
PRS Response 6.56, the current version available from eInstruction’s site, fixes previous problems with saving responses, database stability, and receiver control. However, in the past week, users at another campus have reported that it can be slow when registering, slow when answering, and slow when displaying results. According to eInstruction, 6.56 is required if you are running Windows 7 or MacOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
PRS Response 5.22 (available on the legacy downloads page of eInstruction’s site) is apparently more stable, but is subject to its familiar flaws: not saving data after every question, risk of database corruption, problems with receiver recognition. Although eInstruction does not officially sanction it, some instructors at UMass Amherst have told me that they have used 5.22 successfully with Windows 7.
PRS 4.42 (also available on the legacy downloads page of eInstruction’s site) is very old, but also very stable (University of Georgia seems to be sticking with this version). eInstruction will not confirm if it is compatible with newer operating systems or receivers. If you have first-hand experience with using 4.22 successfully (or not) on newer systems or receivers, please let us know.
The download page for eInstruction:
http://www.einstruction.com/support_downloads/downloads.html
The download page for legacy software from eInstruction:
http://www.einstruction.com/support_downloads/legacy.html
—
This semester’s PRS Community of Best Practice will be held Friday, April 16 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
The focus of this event will be the use of PRS to initiate and promote classroom discussions. After an initial presentation by Dan Lass of Resource Economics gets the ball rolling, we will break into tables (grouped by discipline if practical) so that everyone has a chance to focus on the questions and techniques that apply best to their specific courses. Instructors from the humanities and other disciplines where this approach would be valuable are especially encouraged to attend.
Goodies will be served.
Register for this event online (under “Spring 2010 Workshops”):
https://etna.oit.umass.edu/public/workshops
—
As preparation for this event, or if you are interested in the topic and not able to make it, check out these recent posts on “Teaching with Classroom Response Systems“, a blog by Derek Bruff (an assistant director at the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching).
Can Clickers Help Teach Critical Thinking? In the Humanities?
http://derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/?p=559
Ho’od Win? Vikings vs. Samurai – Clickers and Counterfactual Thinking
http://derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/?p=548
Last week, I reported that we were finding 8-digit PRS radio IDs being shortened to 6 digits. We have discovered that the built-in powered receivers in the classrooms are the source of the problem.
When one of the built-in powered receivers gets an 8-digit radio ID, it only records the last 6 digits. The portable USB receivers (the ones that look like black USB thumb drives) do not have this problem; they receive and record both 8 and 6-digit radio IDs.
If you only use the portable USB receivers, this problem does not affect you. However, if you use the built-in powered receivers in the large classrooms, we recommend that you review your session data, and consider switching to a portable receiver while we work on replacing and/or fixing the built-in receivers.
More details and suggestions below: Read the rest of this entry »
