• Unit: SP10059 Principles and Uses of Social Science
  • Department/School: Social aand Policy Sciences
  • Level: Certificate
  • Unit Tutor: Leah Wild
  • Keywords [pedagogical]: large-group-teaching
  • Keywords [technical]: audience-response-systems, ars

Background

Aims and objectives of the lecture

  • To develop students’ understang of common problems in the creation of survey questions
  • To collect a series of data in the form of responses to survey  questions created by students
  • To assess the usefulness of ARS inachieving these two objectives

What actually took place?
Prior to the lecture, 84 students worked in small groups to create four survey questions per group.  Each set of questions was linked to  a research question that students had developed from a literature  review. 17 groups generated 68 questions. Each set of 4 questions was displayed in turn. Students discussed the wording of each  question and made suggestions for reducing ambiguity or reducing bias  or otherwise improving the wording of the question.  Each individual answered each question using the ARS.

What was the role of the technology? What did the technology add?
ARS allowed questions to be displayed to the whole group and also  allowed students to respond anonymously   This could not have been  done in any other way n the time availanle, or without extremely  laborious counting processes.   ARS also allowed data to be captured  immediately.   Data could be distributed to students in the form of  Excel spreadsheets and they were able to manipulate both their own  data as well as those of other groups.

Outcomes

At the end of the session, students were asked about the usefulness of  ARS as a way of developing their understanding of common problems in the creation of survey questions. They used ARS to respond to a few questions about this and the results are attached in an Excel  spreadsheet. Data was collected and distributed to students within a day of the session.

Were the objectives met?
Yes

How did the students find it?
See above

Were there any unexpected outcomes?
Much better than expected.

What tips do you have for others?

  • Allow half a day to familiarise yourself with the TurningPoint  software and prepare the first session.  After that, half an hour will be enough. This was a two hour session and students did develop clicker fatigue  after an hour and a half. The clicking was broken up by discussion, but even so, one hour is pronanly the optimum.
  • Have three people to help – one to conduct the class, one to operate  the PC and one to distribute clickers and deal with any problems.
  • Don’t forget to take the dongle out of the PC and put it back in the clicker bag.
  • Trust Nitin.

Tags: ,