Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 9
Transforming the Personal Response System
to a Cloud Voting Service
Yu-Hui Tao and C. Rosa Yeh
9.1
Introduction
The personal response system (PRS), otherwise known as classroom (Fies and
Marshall
2006
), people (Griff and Matter
2008
), student (Bunce et al.
2006
), and
audience (Bunz
2005
) response system and electronic voting system (Draper
and Brown
2004
), has been increasingly used in classroom teaching since a new
generation of infrared PRS became available in 1999 and subsequently used widely
after 2003 (Abrahamson
2006
). Figure
9.1
presents a graphical sketch of the PRS
classroom environment. The instructor uses the teacher's infrared-based remote
control to click a question from the PRS server, and the overhead projector projects
the image of the question on a white screen in front of a class of students. The
students can respond to the multiple-choice question using their own infrared-based
remote controls, and see the confirmation of their click action; in this case, the
changing color of their remote control numbers as displayed around the edges of
the screen from green to red. All the click actions are immediately stored; thus, the
teacher can show the statistics on screen to the students. Appropriate subsequent
actions can then be taken from the perspectives of teaching instructions, which can
be part of the pedagogical strategies designed for adopting PRS in the classroom
setting.
In the West, PRS is commonly implemented in major universities, such as
Harvard (ATG
2010
), Cornell (CIT
2012
), and Berkeley (ETS
2009
). Why do
these universities adopt PRS? According to the benefits summarized by the
