Glossary of Common PRS Terms

PRS (Personal Response System):

PRS (Personal Response System) is a simple, inexpensive technology that allows students to use handheld clickers to submit answers to questions.

Session:

This is the name given to one class period during which PRS responses are collected. A session begins when you tell the PRS software that you are ready to start asking questions by clicking on the 'New Session' button. The session runs from the beginning to end of your class and you may ask as many questions as you have time for or as few as 1. When you end the session, a session file is saved to your computer.

Session File:

After each PRS session, the responses the students make will be saved in a session file. The session file is viewable in Excel and composed of two parts, one containing the students' individual responses to each question answered; the other showing the number of students choosing a particular response for each of the question answered. The preferred way to view a session file it to select it in the Sessions Mode of the PRS software and click the 'Review Session' Button.

Roster:

A Roster is a comma separated value file (viewable and editable in Excel) that links names with PRS IDs of students in a class. A roster of just the student IDs and clicker IDs will automatically be generated when running your class, so there is no need to import a roster if this is sufficient for your grading (and it usually is).  More can be filled in if you need to see their names.  OWL can generate rosters of this type for import for instance.  Generally though it is not necessary.”

Lesson:

A lesson is a series of questions written or imported by the professor for use during a session. The questions in the Lesson, or a selected subset of the Questions, are presented to the audience during the Session. A Lesson's Questions can be composed in PRS or, because many textbook publishers provide electronic Question Sets with their textbooks, Question Sets can be imported. See the PRS help menu for more information about importing Question Sets.

Mark:

Marking is the process of Grading a session file in the PRS Sessions Mode. The grader selects the correct answer for each question (or 'Any' if there is all answers are correct, or 'None' if there is no correct answer) and determines how many points to give for a correct answer and how many points to give for an incorrect answer. The program then calculates a grade for every student for that session. Students not present will get 0.

Gradebook:

The Gradebook feature of InterWrite PRS allows a grader to keep track of a student's cumulative score over multiple sessions. See the Gradebooks page or the PRS help menu for more information about Gradebooks.

Histogram (Or Response Graph):

A histogram is a graph or plot used to show frequency. In PRS it is a graph that is displayed after the results have been collected and it shows how many students answered each possible answer. The histogram can be set to display actual numbers of students or percentages of the class. An example of a histogram is shown below. The possible choices were 1 through 5, 80% chose 5, and 10% chose 1 and 2 respectively.

histogram

 

Transmitter/ Clicker/ Unit:

All names for the device that students use to transmit answers the the Receivers.

Receivers:

Small boxes that collect the signals transmitted by students. They are usually in the metal cabinets in the classrooms but they can also be portable.

Countdown Timer:

A Timer that describes how long students have to answer a question during a Session. The timer can be incremented or decremented by 30 seconds by clicking on the arrow buttons to the right or left of the clock respectively (even while the clock is running).

Survey Question:

A question asked in class to gather data or gauge opinion rather than test knowledge. For instance, On a scale of 1-5 with five being the hardest, how difficult do you think last night's test was? or, How many sisters and brothers do you have? There is no 'right' answer to a survey question.