Three ways to ask PRS questions:

There are three ways to ask PRS questions during a lecture:

  1. Prepare a "Lesson" in the PRS software before class
  2. Embed PRS questions in a PowerPoint slide show
  3. Use PRS to gather responses to questions on the fly


Each solution has its own advantages and disadvantages, which are discussed below.


Prepare a lesson in the PRS Response Software

In PRS, a Lesson is a set of questions intended to be asked during one class period, i.e. in the same session.  They are intended for instructors who wish to write the majority of their questions ahead of time and want the ability to ask their questions at any point during their lecture.  The authoring of these questions is fairly straight forward, but creative uses can provide powerful results in the classroom. A video tutorial is provided by the PRS company.

  • Pros: Instructor can switch to the questions at any time and easily flip between them. Instructor can add questions on the fly when teaching, either from other PRS lessons or typed in by hand.
  • Cons: If using other software to lecture, the Instructor must switch into the PRS software when they want to ask a question. (See below for more information on how to integrate PRS with PowerPoint.) Questions must be authored in the built-in authoring tool which is limited in how questions can be displayed.


More training videos and resources are provided by Interwrite Learning.


Embed PRS questions in a PowerPoint Presentation

As well as running PRS through the actual PRS program it is possible to embed PRS questions into PowerPoint slides.  This allows instructors to better integrate questions into their slides and frees them from having to switch between PowerPoint and PRS when lecturing.  The use of the PowerPoint plug-in is fairly straight forward and a video tutorial is provided by the company here.

  • Pros: Questions are built right into the PowerPoint presentation and come up automatically. There is no need to switch between programs. Can use power point to design the presentation of the question (including images, video and audio).
  • Cons: Instructors cannot insert questions on the fly
    The PRS session must end when the PowerPoint presentation ends.
    This method has a history of being somewhat less stable than using the PRS Response Software. It is also not compatible with all versions of PowerPoint on all operating systems.

Use PRS to gather Responses on the fly

It is possible to run a PRS session without creating a lesson or embedding questions into PowerPoint.  Some instructors find this useful because it allows them to completely take the question-asking into their own hands and simply use the PRS tool for polling.  This means they could have questions created completely on the fly or created in some format other than PowerPoint such as from a website, from overheads etc.

If you need help figuring out how to run a session without a lesson contact the Instructional Media Lab for support at instruct@oit.umass.edu.

  • Pros: This method offers complete flexibility.  Instructors can ask any kind of question at any time and can create questions on the fly easily, using PRS simply for polling.
  • Cons: Instructors must manually tell PRS what type of question is being asked (i.e. multiple choice, numeric etc.) when the question is created on the fly.
    Instructors must manually specify the correct answer for the question in PRS once it has been asked.

IMPORTANT:

  • If you are using Lessons:
  • You may set the correct answer to the question while authoring the question. If you do not want this to be visible to the students when the histogram comes up, set “Show Correct Response” under the Graph Window Defaults in the Edit Class window to “No.”
  • The question number x will be displayed as x/n where n is the total number of questions in the Lesson.
  • If you are not using Lessons:
  • You must keep track of which question is which. If you ask 4 questions during a class using No Lesson, then you must know which was which in order to grade them.
  • You may ask as many questions as you like before ending the session.


Note: Some publishers provide electronic Question Sets with their textbooks that can be imported into PRS as Lessons. See the eInstruction PRS Help menu for more information.