Instructor Resources
What is PRS?
PRS (Personal Response System) is a simple, inexpensive technology that allows students to use handheld clickers to submit answers to questions. It is designed to allow anonymous student participation during lectures.The typical process for using PRS:
- 1. The instructor comes up with a question to ask the class, and creates the question within the PRS software.
- 2. At an appropriate time during class, the instructor brings the PRS question up on the screen (through the PRS Response Software or the Powerpoint add-on) and asks students to submit a response.
- 3. Students respond to the question using their PRS transmitters (commonly referred to as “clickers”). The clickers are small keypads that send student response data to a PRS receiver connected to the instructor’s computer.
- 4. Once students have had a chance to respond, the response retrieval period stops (though this time can be modified by an instructor) and a graph (sometimes referred to as a histogram) of the student responses can be viewed and discussed. The student responses are automatically saved to the instructor’s computer for later use.
- 5. Once the class period ends, instructors may grade the response data to award credit for both participation and correct answers. This data can be exported for use in Excel, SPARK, OWL or other data-management programs.
As you can imagine, use of the PRS can have a variety of benefits. Some of the benefits are discussed on the
pedagogical benefits page.
