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Students pay extra for class remotes |
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Thursday, 19 January 2006 |
by CLAIR BAXTER
News Editor
For some students, the cost of class participation and attendance has gone from $0 to $20.
Not all students who checked out in the bookstore last week had only books to buy, some had an extra expense – an eInformation or response pad remote.
Students taking either Dr. Philip J. Ardoin’s American Government class
or Dr. Larry T. McRae’s business statistics course had to buy remote
controls as supplementary material.
Ardoin has used the remote in his classes for two years.
“It makes taking attendance much more efficient,” Ardoin said.
“However, the primary reason I use the CPS system is for stimulating
class discussions. They provide a means of taking instant surveys in
class which are anonymous.
“This is critical for political science courses where students are
often uncomfortable stating what some would define as politically
incorrect views. It also provides a means of measuring the classes
understanding of concepts discussed in class and to implement quizzes,”
Ardoin said.
The remote used in Ardoin’s classes, each between 50 and 80 students,
is a long rectangular blue remote called an eInstruction student
response pad and costs around $7 at the bookstore.
McRae’s gray remote, called a “Turning Point” student response pad, is much shorter and thinner and costs $20 at the bookstore.
It is a small radio transmitter that uses the same technology as a remote entry system for a car.
McRae, who used the response pad for the first time last semester, has classes over 40 students.
McRae said as certain classes grow large, it
becomes very difficult to get any feedback or interactivity with
students.
“The main purpose of using the Turning Point technology is to
try to achieve that interactivity. The pad can be used to get responses
to questions by the instructor,” McRae said.
The questions range from true-false to multiple choice to scaled agree-disagree questions, McRae said.
“For each question I can record the individual student’s answers as well as the percentage who gave each response,” he said.
“A typical use would be to put up a problem and four possible answers,
if 90 percent got the answer right we can move onto the next topic, but
if 50 percent miss the question we need to back up and look at the
principle from a different angle.”
This remote control system has been adopted in several universities
throughout the country, including Arizona State University, Ohio State
University and several North Carolina schools.
“While I understand the advantages to the system it seems like we are
losing some other important aspects of the classroom,” junior French
major Whitney E. Baker said.
“ASU is known for its homey atmosphere and with this attendance system teachers won’t ever need to even say a students name.
“We may be saving time and allowing a larger number of students to
participate but we are losing the face-to-face interaction that is so
appealing at this school,” Baker said.
A potential problem for attendance could occur if students bring other students’ remotes to class and sign them in.
“I actually caught a student doing this last semester which is
equivalent to cheating,” Ardoin said. “The student received an
automatic F in the course.”
McRae said other disadvantages to the system include the “cost to the
students, which is exacerbated by the bookstore’s refusal to buy the
used [remotes] back.”
However, Ardoin added, “The instant-anonymous polls which I took in
class regarding the war in Iraq, religion, homosexuality and other
controversial political topics related to the class were critical for
our class discussions.”
“I also conducted a class survey at the end of the semester regarding the system and support was overwhelming,” he said.
“I was actually surprised at how positive of a response I received from the students.”
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