Audience Response System [ARS]

Over the last 12 months or so, I’ve been working with colleagues in the Departments of Computer Science & Social & Policy Sciences respectively to draw together some of their work related to the use of Audience Response Systems (ARS) to enhance feedback to students.

Links to conference papers and presentation slides appear below.

• Cliffe, E., Davenport, J., De Vos, M., Parmar, N. R., Hayes, A., 2010. Using EVS and ResponseWare to Enhance Student Learning and Learning Experience. Submitted to: 11th Annual Conference of Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Information and Computer Science, 24-26 August 2010, Durham, UK. Higher Education Academy Centre for ICS. [paper]
• Bashforth H., Parmar N.R. (2010). The search for active learning: Lessons from a happy accident. In: C-SAP e-Learning Forum: sharing materials and practice in the social sciences. HEA Subject Network for Sociology, Anthropology, Politics. University of Birmingham. [paper| slides available on SlideShare]
• Davenport J.H., Hayes A., Parmar N.R. (2009). The use of an Electronic Voting System to enhance student feedback. In the proceedings of: 4th Plymouth e-Learning Conference: Boundary Changes: Redefining Learning Spaces. [paper | slides available on SlideShare]

Should you have any questions related to any of the findings, please do get in touch with me at e-learning@bath.ac.uk or any of the authors listed.

Last Thursday, I ventured up to the e-Science Institute at the University of Edinburgh for the second event of the Special Interest Group (SIG), Engaging Students Through In-Class Technology (ESTICT)

The event, which is keynoted by Professor Jim Boyle from the University of Strathclyde, saw over 50 delegates from across the UK come together to share best practice in the use of in-class technologies, with a particular focus on the pedagogic uses of Electronic Voting Systems (EVS).

I’ve written up some of my observations and thoughts from the event on my blog, Colligo, at http://colligo.wordpress.com/. Please do head along, have a read and leave a comment (either here or there!).

Yesterday, I attended the first event of the recently formed Special Interest Group (SIG), Engaging Students Through In-Class Technology (ESTICT) at the University of Leicester.  The aim of the event was to share best practice in the use of in-class technology, with a particular focus on the pedagogic uses of Electronic Voting Systems (EVS).

At the University of Bath, we have been running our institutional pilot of Audience Response Systems (ARS) [project website] since the beginning of the 2008/2009, so this event provided a fantastic opportunity to meet with other colleagues from HE and FE institutions from around the UK to get their thoughts on EVS/ARS, the functionality of the software and hardware, the pedagogy that should drive its use… and everything else.

I’ve written up some of my observations and thoughts from yesterday on my blog, Colligo, at http://colligo.wordpress.com/. Please do head along, have a read and leave a comment (either here or there!).

This blog post supports the poster presentation by Nitin Parmar and Andy Ramsden at 3rd Technology Supported Learning Conference, Technology Supported Learning in the 21st Century: Issues and Paradigms in Transformative Tertiary Education 2009 on 1 June 2009 at Staffordshire University. The poster can be downloaded via OPuS.

As will be mentioned during the session, we are very interested in capturing your institutional stories. In particular, the strategies you think are effective at encouraging an individual to adopt new (to them) teaching practices.  What works for your institution? What doesn’t work?

Please leave your comments. Thanks

Last week, Alan Hayes (Department of Computer Science) and I travelled to the Plymouth e-Learning Conference 2009 to present a paper that we had written with Prof. James Davenport, entitled The use of an Electronic Voting System to enhance student feedback. The slides from the presentation appear below.

The presentation began by giving a brief overview of the of the ARS pilot project at the University of Bath before moving onto exploring use of the technology to support the (formative) assessment and feedback process in the CM30072 Networking unit.

For a fuller description of the study, including the presentation of research data, conclusions and scope for future work, colleagues may like to download the paper from OPuS at: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/12505/