Ad hoc clicker usage via Responseware now available

Are you interested in trying out clickers in your classroom before making the decision whether to use them routinely in every class period? Have you always wanted to be able to anonymously poll your staff on important questions during staff meetings?  DoIT is now offering the opportunity for faculty and administrators to do just that via ResponseWare by Turning Technologies.  Using ResponseWare in conjunction with Turning Point Anywhere, faculty can present a question during lecture and have students respond in real-time using a Wi-Fi or data connection, and their own smartphones, laptops or tablets.  Audience responses can be displayed for immediate assessment. Participants can either log in anonymously or by name, and the polling results can be captured for further analysis if desired.

DoIT has a 75-seat license of ResponseWare available for ad hoc usage for classes and meetings.  Interested faculty and staff would need to submit an RT ticket including the specific date and time of their class/ meeting, along with the total number of students/ participants.  They would then need to create a free ResponseWare account (using their UMBC E-mail address) and download and install the Turning Point Anywhere software (available for Mac or PC).  DoIT staff will add them to the ResponseWare license as authorized presenters for a limited amount of time.

Presenters would then complete the following steps in order to start polling:

1. Reserve a ResponseWare session ID
2. Open the ResponsWare session for participants to connect to
3. Display the question you want your participants to answer (you can embed questions in a MS Power Point presentation or any other type of file you can display, or create questions directly in Turning Point Anywhere)
4. Press the start polling arrow in Turning Point Anywhere.
5. Press the same button to stop polling, and the results will display automatically on the screen, as well as on participants' devices.

For further information on using Turning Point Anywhere please register for a clicker workshop on the myUMBC Training group, or if you have at least 4 interested people, contact Karin Readel (readel@umbc.edu) to arrange for cohort-based training.