Use of PRS at
University of Glasgow (10/14/03)
Websites: http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/ilig/local.html
http://www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/CAP/courses/interactive/powerpoint/index.htm.
Email message to Morrie from Jim of U. of Glasgow: (10/12/03)
Thanks for your comments. I've attached two PDF papers which describe in a bit more detail what we have been doing here at Strathclyde University, these include results of an evaluation we did a couple of years ago. We started about eight years ago with Classtalk and recieved a lot of help at the time from Bill Gerace at UMass, Amherst, Eric Mazur at Harvard and Louis Ambrahamson of Better Education (the Classtalk folks) and quickly moved over to PRS when it came out (we also occasionally use CPS). We wanted to address two issues - better teaching and learning, but also to give first year students a better experience since drop out rates were high (20%) - Socratic Dialogue using Classtalk/PRS was only one part of the strategy: students work in groups in all of their classes, we had special teaching rooms/suites constructed with group seating and PRS etc. and we also started Problem Based Learning for Design classes (about a third of the first year credits) and later introduced Studio Teaching through a copy of an RPI Studio. We now only lose a handful of students from first year - just those who realise engineering is not for them. So, it has been difficult to do a true evaluation of the impact of PRS since it has been difficult to separate its effects from all the other changes!
At Strathclyde we have various Engineering departments using it to various extents but is also used heavily in Mathematics, Physiology, Pharmacology, and on an ad hoc basis by many other Departments. A big user, oddly enough, is Modern Languages, especially for French Grammar! We run special training courses for the technology and the pedagogy (the PPT presentation you refer to in the e-mail), but try and get interested academics just to attend a class - that has a very powerful effect even on the suspicious. We then get them to try it out with a few basic questions in class, but insist they ask the crucial question: 'do you understand what I've been talking about'! That usually has an effect ...
We were warned by Bill Gerace when we started that getting others to take up the pedagogy would be difficult and slow - and it has. Here at Strathclyde we have been trying to do this at the same time as a high profile move to 'e-learning' and the use of WebCT, which unhappily many academics see as a more immediate and sexy solution to their teaching woes. Fortunately quite a few others around the UK have also taken up the cause of Classroom Communication Systems, including Steve Draper and Quintin in Glasgow University, who have been very good at getting others on board, as you have seen from Steve's web site, and using PRS in quite innovative ways (including developing their own software).
If you need any more info, please feel free to contact any time, since we all need to support each other in order to start to get rid of all those boring 'lectures' ...
Papers:
· Peer instruction vs class-wide discussions in large classes ...