Study of Use of Clickers/Student Response Systems at Georgia Gwinnett College Current Landscape at the campus: At GGC we currently have

a total of 3 sets of Turning Point clickers. Each clicker set contains about 25 clickers and a RF receiver/host. These clickers are the ResponseCard models with no LCD screen as illustrated below:

Problems and Issues: No LCD display No battery indicator Inability to do Self Paced High Stakes testing Several separate applications need to be installed for specific tasks Software has a bit of a learning curve Weak Reporting No gaming application No numeric or text input allowed during polling

High Stake Testing at GGC: When a faculty at GGC wants to administer high stakes testing for their classes, their choices is limited to using a paper test with Scantron or online on Blackboard. Additionally if the faculty wants to perform item analysis of the test or gather more statistics for research and archival and comparion, this becomes problematic. Some faculty administers high stake testing through Blackboard if they can find an available computer lab. Recently with increased enrollment it has

been very difficult for faculty to reserve computer labs for midterm and final exams. Since GGC does not have a lockdown browser feature, high stake testing on Blackboard has security issues. In addition because of the problems and limitations of the current Turning Technologies clickers, faculty use of clickers in the classroom is very low.

Pilot Study To address the above problems, the CTE researched and solicited loaner clicker sets from the top players in the HigherEd market. Turning Technologies, Einstruction and Qwizdom shipped loaner sets to the CTE. The CTE staff evaluated each product and functionalites both for formative and summative assessment. The following faculty members were given a clicker set for evaluation in their classrooms: Gary Nelson, Natasha Brewley, Robert Dunford, Ramakrishna Menon, Jennifer Sinclair and Catherine Kilroe Smith. Dr. Ally Barerra will start her evaluation in spring 2011. The following is an illustration of the clickers that were evaluated:

Turning Technologies XR

Einstruction PRS

Qwizdom Q6

Summary of Findings and Comparison: LCD Display: Qwizdom Q6 had the largest and sharpest display Software: Turning Technologies needed installation of 4 separate applications and required mastery of 4 separate applications and interfaces to do both summative and formative assessment and polling through Microsoft Powerpoint. Einstruction required the installation of 2 separate applications to do both summative and formative

assessment and polling through Microsoft Powerpoint. Qwizdom required only 1 application to be installed to do summative, formative, polling through Microsoft Powerpoint and floating polling over any application. In addition the Qwizdom software was intuitive and easy to use. Reporting: Turning Technologies Reporting was quite rudimentary and left much to be desired. Einstruction had good reporting options. Qwizdom Reporting was very strong and robust with many choices to slice and analyze the data. High Stake Testing: Turning Technologies had the most poorly designed high stake testing interface. It was difficult to create an answer key. When students finish answering all questions, there is no indicator displayed that tells the students that they have reached the end of the test. There is no feature for the instructor to engage multiple versions of the test to prevent cheating. There is no real time teacher dashboard for the teacher to monitor real time data as the test is progressing. Reporting only provides a cumulative score and does not provide details of how each student answered each question. Einstruction had a better interface and functionality for high stakes testing. It provided a real time teacher dashboard, allows the teacher to engage multiple versions of test. However it was not easy to create an answer key, nor does the software indicate to students when the test is complete and they have answered all questions. Again Qwizdom had the best features and functionalities for high stakes testing. It was very easy to create answer keys. Multiple answers keys can be engaged to prevent cheating. Students are notified on the LCD screen when they have reached the end of the test. It gives them a choice to end the test of go back and revise and change their answers. The instructor has a rich color coded dashboard that displays in real-time how students are performing in the test. Instant Score Feedback: Qwizdom was the only product that provided instant cumulative score to the student clicker LCD display once the high stake test was complete. This feature can be turned off by the instructor if he/she chooses to do so. This feature is extremely crucial and important to instructors and students. Just like in online testing, students expect to know their overall score immediately after they complete the test. Bi-Directional Messaging/Data transfer: Qwizdom was the only product that allows bidirection data transfer between the RF host and the clicker. In other words data can push from the RF receiver to the clickers and back from the clicker to the RF host. Using this option faculty can choose to have the high stake question text and answer choices displayed on the clicker LCD display if they choose to do so. There is however a 450 character limit. This feature can be very useful to display all the question text on the clicker LCD display instead of paper.

Gaming Applications: Turning Technology has very limited and rudimentary gaming application built into the polling software. Their offering is limited to inserting ice breaker Powerpoint templates limited to fill in the blanks and analogy. Einstructions gaming is limited to a rudimentary Jeapardy template. However the limitation is that all the question slots must be completed before the game can be compiled. In other words the instructor cannot simply create a Jeapardy game with just 5 questions. Qwizdom offers 4 interactive gaming tools that the instructor can choose to present and engage any content. They are Baseball, Fasttrack, Mars and Quandry. Two teams are needed to play Baseball, which the program will automatically group by remote numbers: odd number remotes vs. even number remotes. The outcome of the game depends on the number of correct responses of each team for each question. Fast Track is a race car game in which points are rewarded based on the response time of each remote. Mars Mission is a space ship game in which points are rewarded based on the response time of each remote. Quandary is a Jeopardy-like game where users select various dollar amount questions from a game board. 25 slides (questions) are recommended in order to fill the game board. Gradebook: Once a polling session was completed, scores in the gradebook for Turning Technology software could not be edited or changed. There was limited ability to do some editing and changes on the Einstruction Gradebook. The Qwizdom Gradebook was very flexible and enabled the instructor to edit a student response, add bonus point and quickly regrade if a mistake was found in the answer key after the test was completed. Integration with LMS: Einstruction has the ability to integrate assessment/gradebook with Blackboard/Vista, but only in the book store purchase model of clickers. In this model, students are required to purchase their clickers from the bookstore and register to blackboard course through Einstruction website. At GGC we do not see the book store purchase model as a viable option currently. Turning Point has the functionality to integrate gradebook with Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai and Angel, that involves customization and install of plugins to the LMS server and only works in the book store purchasemodel. Qwizdom offers gradebook integration to LMS using export to CSV file. Integration of Qwizdom gradebook to Moodle, Sakai and Blackboard is currently in progress and expected to be released soon. Recommendation: Qwizdom appear to be the best clicker for use at GGC. It will enable faculty to quickly administer secure high stake testing in the classroom without the need for Scantrons or reservation of shrinking pool of available computer labs and do engaging summative assessment and surveys in the classroom. This will help GGC faculty infuse and energize their classroom with effective tools that will encourage class participation, instant feedback and rich data mining.