Technology
Media Services
Audience Response Systems: Overview
Audience Response Systems, or "clickers," are being used at Simmons. Sets are available for short-term loans from Media Services.
What are Audience Response Systems?
Audience Response Systems, or "clickers" is a technology that allows people to ask questions and gather responses during a lecture. A popular example of this technology was on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire: when the audience ‘clicked' and the contestant could see the result of the "ask the audience" immediately. This same technology is also used in teaching, as a technique to make classroom-time more interactive, to demonstrate a methodology, to test comprehension, etc.
Clicker systems are also called Classroom Response Systems, Student Response Systems, Interactive Response Systems, Response Cards or Personal Response Systems.
In clicker systems, each person uses a "clicker" that looks like a TV remote to answer questions posed through a customized PowerPoint presentation. Summaries of responses can be shown in real time to everyone. Answers are also stored electronically for later viewing.
Clicker systems components
Clicker systems have 3 components:
- Clickers, operated by students or participants
- Software, installed on the professor or leader's computer (already installed on all Simmons podium computers)
- A USB receiver plugged into the computer that receives signals as the students "click," and sends them into the software
There are kits available to faculty and staff for 2 week loans through Media Services that include both clickers and a USB receiver.