This article was downloaded by: [Newcastle University]On: 19 December 2014, At: 07:18Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Journal of Technology in Human ServicesPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wths20
Audience Response System (Clickers) by TurningPointPublished online: 08 Sep 2008.
To cite this article: (2007) Audience Response System (Clickers) by TurningPoint, Journal of Technology in Human Services,25:3, 107-114, DOI: 10.1300/J017v25n03_07
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J017v25n03_07
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
HARDWARE/SOFTWARE REVIEW
Audience Response System (Clickers)by TurningPoint
Software Review Summary
Software Application: TurningPoint 2006 version 3.1.7.6206
Keywords: Response, radio frequency, clickers, interactive PowerPoint
Journal of Technology in Human Services, Vol. 25(3) 2007Available online at http://jths.haworthpress.com
© 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J017v25n03_07 107
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
New
cast
le U
nive
rsity
] at
07:
18 1
9 D
ecem
ber
2014
Product Summary: TurningPoint Audience Response System is an inter-active system that uses response clickers to allow participants to re-spond in real time to questions integrated into Microsoft PowerPoint.
Evaluation Summary: The TurningPoint Audience Response System isan easy to use package that adds interactivity to PowerPoint presenta-tions. The hardware is easy to configure and the software is easy to un-derstand and use.
Source: TurningPoint Audience Response System is developed byTurning Technologies (http://www.turningtechnologies.com/). Turn-ing Technologies is located in Youngtown Ohio and can be reached at1-866-746-3015.
Product Detail: Price for the TurningPoint Audience Response Systembegins at $199 for a receiver and $65 for the clicker. Prices can be sub-stantially reduced when the systems are purchased in bulk or in con-junction with a textbook. The TurningPoint 2006 software can bedownloaded from the company’s Website. The minimal requirementsfor running the software includes a 1 GHz processor, 256 MB of ram,60 MB hard drive space, Windows 2000 SP4 or Windows XP, and astandard USB port.
Reviewer Hardware and Software: The author installed the Turning-Point 2006 version 3.1.7.6206 software on a Gateway M280 Tablet PCwith 1.86 GHz processor and 1Gb of ram.
Reviewer: AndrewS. Quinn, PhDAssistant ProfessorCollege of Education and Human Development,Box 7135University of North DakotaGrand Forks, ND 58202(E-mail: [email protected])
INTRODUCTION
A presentation technology that is more readily available are clickers.A clicker is a device that allows the user to click in a response to ques-tions asked in a presentation or lecture. If the presentation is being de-livered in a compatible software product, such as MS PowerPoint,
108 JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY IN HUMAN SERVICES
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
New
cast
le U
nive
rsity
] at
07:
18 1
9 D
ecem
ber
2014
responses are automatically displayed in the presentation. Figure 1 pre-sents an image of a TurningPoint clicker.
Clickers can come with built-in LED displays or non-LED displayssimilar to the clicker pictured in Figure 1. The models that have the LEDdisplays allow the students to see their responses prior to registeringwithin the PowerPoint Software. The models that do not have the LEDdisplay do not let the students see their responses as they are sent live. Inaddition, clickers use either radio frequency (RF) or infra-red waves(IR) to send a signal to a device located in the room during a presenta-tion. This device, called a receiver, records the users’ responses. The ra-dio frequency clickers tend to have a range between 200 and 400 feet,while the infra-red is limited to 90 feet. TurningPoint provides softwarethat is integrated with Microsoft PowerPoint to allow presenters to cre-ate questions and answers that can be responded to in real time. Userclicks are tallied and displayed instantaneously to the audience within aPowerPoint Slide. Any type of questions can be asked that can be an-swered by pressing a key from 1 to 9. For example, questions can focuson reinforcing knowledge or seeking users’ opinions on hot topics. Theanswers, or responses, can be in the form of multiple choice, Yes/No, orLikert items. In addition to seeing the results live, reports can begenerated that associate answers with the people using the clickers.
Several companies that offer clickers include eInstruction, Quizdom,Options Technologies Interactive, and TurningPoint Technologies. Atthe time of this review, clickers from these companies appeared similar.Each company has software that works in conjunction with PowerPoint,offers both IR and RF models, has clickers that have LED and non-LED
Hardware/Software Review 109
FIGURE 1. The TurningPoint Clicker
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
New
cast
le U
nive
rsity
] at
07:
18 1
9 D
ecem
ber
2014
displays, and packages their clickers with textbooks. The main differ-ence in the clickers is in price, with the majority of the companies sell-ing their clickers for around $30. One company (eInstruction) sells theirclickers for about $5 but requires that the user register the clicker withthe company for about $18 per semester. Essentially, the companieshave very similar products with one product not appearing superior toanother. Differences exist in the form of support, the look and feel of thesoftware to be used with the clickers, and how each company generatestheir report. Thus, the choice of clickers is often based on room size,price, and packaging with a textbook.
The TurningPoint Audience Response System (ARS) (http://www.turningtechnologies.com) will be the focus of this review. The TurningPoint clickers are the main product used within the Social Work Depart-ment at the University of North Dakota. TurningPoint offers several dif-ferent pricing schemes for their ARS. Pricing begins at $199 for thereceiver and $65 for the clickers. Prices go down when the clickersare purchased in bulk. Even with the various price schemes, clickerscould be considered expensive for academic settings. However, theTurningPoint ARS (software and receiver) were provided at no cost tothe author because they were packaged with the textbooks. Thus, thecost of the clickers became the responsibility of the students. During thesemester that the ARS was used by this author, only one student com-plained about the cost of $35.
TURNINGPOINT SOFTWARE APPLICATION
TurningPoint software installs smoothly directly into Microsoft PowerPoint. A new toolbar is integrated into the PowerPoint shell. Figure 2shows the TurningPoint toolbar.
110 JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY IN HUMAN SERVICES
FIGURE 2. TurningPoint Toolbar
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
New
cast
le U
nive
rsity
] at
07:
18 1
9 D
ecem
ber
2014
The toolbar offers easy access to the numerous features available inthe ARS. The features include developing participant lists, insertingquestion slides, and running participant reports. These features will beelaborated later on. Since the clicker was tested in an academic setting,the terms instructor, students, and classroom will be used.
Participants. The first step in using the ARS is that students have toregister their clickers. Each clicker has a 6-digit alphanumeric code thatis used to associate a clicker with a student name. The TurningPointsoftware creates a participant list either by (1) importing a MicrosoftExcel spreadsheet that identifies the student by clicker or (2) having thestudent go to a Website, choose the class number, and register theclicker. The software is also supposed to integrate with Blackboard topull in a class list (the instructor still has to manually enter in the clickercode). However, at the time of this review, this feature was not set up towork with the Blackboard system employed by the reviewer’s univer-sity. Information is imported into the TurningPoint software and a par-ticipation list is formed. In the past, this reviewer has generated an Excelspreadsheet with student names and clicker codes and imported the in-formation into the TurningPoint software. The manual process, whiletedious, was chosen because at the time of this review neither theWebsite registration nor the Blackboard proved effective. Both meth-ods were still in the pilot stages. Overall, the creation of the participantlist is necessary if the instructor needs to see who and how the clickerquestions were answered by individual students. However, in a businessmeeting where votes may be anonymous, registration is not necessary.
Question Slides. The nucleus of the TurningPoint software is theability to create question slides that are integrated into Microsoft PowerPoint slide shows. The slide includes both the question and the results.The choices of slides are based on how the results are displayed. For ex-ample, a vertical slide displays the results using a bar graph, while a 3Dpie graph uses a pie chart to display the results. Additional slides in-clude a doughnut slide, a horizontal slide, a distributed pie slide, and anoffset slide. These slides can be chosen from a drop down menu foundunder “Insert slides” in the TurningPoint toolbar. Figure 3 shows a ver-tical slide. This slide demonstrates a tally taken during a discussion onadolescent maturity that occurred during a Human Behavior Course.This type of slide presents a discussion question. Another type of ques-tion that can be used is a knowledge reinforcement type of question. Forexample, in a research methods course, students can be asked to identifya nonprobability sampling methods. This type of question can be givenafter a lecture on sampling.
Hardware/Software Review 111
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
New
cast
le U
nive
rsity
] at
07:
18 1
9 D
ecem
ber
2014
In addition, TurningPoint provides some pre-selected answer slides.These slides include yes/no, Likert items, and true/false slides. Once theslides are created, objects that enhance the slides can be added. For ex-ample, if a question is used that has a correct answer (i.e., not an opinionslide), a smiley face is among one of the many choices that an instructorcan use to indicate correct answers. The animation occurs after all thestudents have clicked in their responses and the instructor progressesthe slideshow. The use of the animation provides additional reinforce-ment. In addition, a countdown time can be used. The countdown timelets the students know how long they have to respond.
The question slides can be added to an existing PowerPoint slideshow or be created on the fly while developing a PowerPoint slideshow. Overall, creating the slides was quite simple and easy. This au-thor was able to integrate the slides into existing PowerPoint presenta-tions and was also able to create the slides while developing a newPowerPoint presentation.
Going Live. Once the presentation is created, going live is a matter ofusing the slideshow feature of Microsoft PowerPoint. When a slide ap-pears that requires a response, students use their clickers to indicatetheir answer. A toolbar appears that indicates how many students haveresponded. This toolbar is very useful because it allows the instructor tosee how many people in the class still need to respond.
112 JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY IN HUMAN SERVICES
FIGURE 3. A Vertical Slide
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
New
cast
le U
nive
rsity
] at
07:
18 1
9 D
ecem
ber
2014
Examining the Results. The TurningPoint software offers the abilityto create reports that indicate how students respond to the clicker ques-tions. Reports can be generated by question or by respondent. These re-ports are created as Microsoft Excel files. The Excel reports consist ofthe respondents’ id number, name (if clickers are associated with stu-dent names) and the responses. Reports can be generated by participantsor by questions asked.
Support. TurningPoint technologies offers several asynchronous webcasts that demonstrate basic, intermediate, and advance use of theTurningPoint ARS and its features. The Webcast are extremely infor-mative and helpful in understanding the TurningPoint ARS. In addition,the TurningPoint Website offers documentation and phone and e-mailsupport. This author had a great experience when talking to the salesand tech support staff at TurningPoint. There were no wait times. Thesales staff were able to provide detailed information about cost, whilethe tech support staff helped resolve an issue surrounding a nonfunc-tioning clicker.
USE OF CLICKERS IN THE HUMAN SERVICES
This author used clickers to facilitate discussions and review contentin several courses. For example, in a Human Behavior course, clickerquestions were used to encourage discussion on controversial topicslike abortion and assisted suicide. In a quantitative methods course, theclickers were used to review content such as asking the students thesample size of a single subject design. While answers to clicker ques-tions were never graded, the response were tallied and counted as part ofthe class participation grade.
Preliminary data collected indicate that students really enjoy the click-ers. They felt that it reinforced knowledge, allowed students to remainanonymous, and facilitated discussion. The major drawback was that stu-dents did not know (at least with the Thompson ARS clickers used) thattheir responses were recorded at the time they responded to a clickerquestion. Hopefully, in the future, this author will employ the LED click-ers and students will be able to see that their responses were recorded.However, the current textbook packing scheme does not include the LEDclickers. The benefit of the LED models is that the students can see theirresponses as they click them in. One problem reported by this author’sstudents was an uncertainty that the responses were actually registered.
Hardware/Software Review 113
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
New
cast
le U
nive
rsity
] at
07:
18 1
9 D
ecem
ber
2014
The LED model will show the students’ response thus reinforcing theknowledge that the students’ response was received.
The use of clickers in various human service settings depends on one’simagination. For example, clickers can be used during conference pre-sentations, can be used during focus groups, during a United Way priori-ties setting meeting, or to poll meeting participants prior to a vote. Forexample, clickers could be used at a meeting where a motion is being dis-cussed. Meeting participants could be asked to register their preliminaryvote and how likely they are to change their minds. If almost all partici-pants in a meeting indicate that they will vote to approve a motion orre\port and are very unlikely to change their minds, then meeting partici-pants might prefer to call a quick vote and save time for more controver-sial agenda items. Another use for the clickers is in the arena of training.During training, the clickers can be used to review or reinforce what Hu-man service workers have learned. For example, child protective workerscan be brought into a training seminar on how to recognize different lev-els of physical abuse. Clicker slides can be created with pictures of vary-ing severity and the worker can be given choices on how they wouldrespond to the victim based on the training materials presented.
CONCLUSION
In sum, this author found the Personal Response System easy to useas indicated in the Software Review Summary.
The software installed easy and the USB receiver and the clickersworked smoothly. The participant list, while tedious to create, was eas-ily imported from Microsoft Excel. A drawback is the cost. For studentsto buy the clicker packaged with their text, the cost was about $35 abovethe cost of books. In addition, university departments tend not to havefunds to purchase the clickers to use with many classes. Another draw-back is the fact that there is an infra-red version and a radio frequencyversion. The instructor needs to communicate with the students or thebookstore and indicate which type of clicker to purchase. The radio fre-quency and the infra-red versions are not compatible. A final drawbackis that the non-LED clickers make it difficult for the students to knowimmediately whether their responses were recorded. These drawbackscan be considered minor because student feedback from the students en-rolled in this author’s class indicates the clickers were easy to use andbeneficial in facilitating the learning process. The use of clickers inother human services settings might also prove beneficial.
114 JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY IN HUMAN SERVICES
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
New
cast
le U
nive
rsity
] at
07:
18 1
9 D
ecem
ber
2014
