As Innovation Lead for the Office of Distance Education and eLearning, my job involves setting up tests of new technologies that may be adopted by the university. At this time I am putting the final touches on a test of Student Response systems.
In the past OSU supported clickers from Turning Technologies, however in this day when virtually every student has a laptop, smartphone, tablet, or music player that can show web pages or run apps, we have a number of new student response options that allow for more complex answers from students than A/B/C/D using devices they already have in their pockets and book bags. Image heat maps, formulas, class discussions, and more can all be accomplished through modern student response tools.
Over the past three months a cross-university Student Response Committee evaluated potential vendors. The committee felt two features were critical to adoption: painless export of student data to Carmen grade book and a single sign-on so students can use their university ID to sign in on the vendor system.
By choosing ResponseWare, TopHat, and ViaResponse for evaluation we believe these priorities can be met. With this in mind I am interested in having a small group of OSU Faculty test as many of the three systems as you feel comfortable evaluating so we have as much data as possible as we consider the benefits and pitfalls of each system. I would ask any participants to agree to test at least two.
The process of evaluation will be conducted in three phases; the first product to be evaluated is ResponseWare.
Calendar:
February 6 ~ 7: Training with ResponseWare representatives
February 10 ~ 21: Test ResponseWare in class
February 19 ~ 26: Release ResponseWare student and faculty polls
February 24 ~ 25: Training with TopHat
March 3 ~ 13: Test Top Hat in class
March 12 ~ 19: Release Top Hat student and faculty poll
March 17 ~ 18: Training on ViaResponse
March 19 ~ April 3: Test Via Response in class
April 2 ~ 9: Release Via Response student and faculty polls
Mid April: wrap up meeting with participating Faculty and Student Response Evaluation Committee members to discuss features, strengths, and weaknesses of each product. We will test Carmen grade book integration and single sign-on capabilities in May and put forth a final recommendation before the start of the next fiscal year.
In addition to learning about student response systems, participating faculty and their students will be given the opportunity to test and offer feedback that will guide university decision making on this important classroom tool. Access will be free for all students.
If this sounds like something you or a faculty member you know would be interested in trying please contact me at hooker.24@osu.edu with your course name/ number and the number of students in your class before February 7th and I’ll get you into the pilot.
Thank you!
Dave Hooker