Jordan P. Lippman et al.
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Personal response systems (PRS). Pellegrino and Lippman have also engaged students during
class by using handheld personal response system (PRS) units and the associated data
capture and presentation software (Interwrite Learning Personal Response System, n.d.).
Such systems allow for display of multiple-choice or true–false questions with immediate
capture and display of aggregate student responses. In Pellegrino’s classes, each student was
assigned a PRS unit at the start of the semester, which was then brought to class and used
to earn daily class participation points. We required them to return the unit (or pay for its
replacement) before a final grade in the class would be posted. Students may also purchase
a PRS unit and then sell the units to future students; in some cases the units can be bundled
with the text and sold through the bookstore. PRS units are particularly useful in large
classes where it is otherwise difficult to gain the attention of all students and to gauge the
distribution of their responses to questions. Because students can respond anonymously,
there is little reluctance to respond to challenging queries and no concern about publicly
embarrassing oneself if it turns out your response to a query is not “correct.” Often students
see that they are not alone in responding in a particular way and feel less concerned about
spontaneously explaining why they may have made the choice they did.
We have used PRS to elicit student misconceptions and preconceptions regarding key
concepts and topic areas such as how memory works or the nature of intelligence, to dem-
onstrate phenomena like false memory, and in the prediction and interpretation of data
from online CogLab experiments. After describing the theory and design of a study (an
online CogLab, class demonstration, or other described study) we might display a set of
possible predictions and then ask students to select one. After displaying a graph of the
distribution of their responses, we ask one or more students to volunteer and explain their
responses. Finally, we present the actual results. Alternatively, we have presented the design
and results of a study and then used PRS to elicit student endorsements for potential
interpretations of the data. Thus, PRS allows us to engage all students in a large lecture in
the critical thinking involved in making predictions and interpreting results. It also
provides us with a means of collecting immediate formative assessment information
regarding students’ understanding of critical aspects of the material (Wiliam, 2007) with
the opportunity to immediately address misunderstandings rather than simply move on.
Analysis of Activity
In volunteer end-of-term evaluations in Pellegrino’s classes, we ask students about their
favorite parts of the class. Students consistently rate the online CogLab and lecture as their
first or second favorite. We coded students’ open-ended explanations of why they selected
CogLab as their favorite component of the class as well as responses to an open-ended
request for comments about the activity. In both cases, the most common comments
indicated that students liked the CogLabs because they were concrete, easy to do, interest-
ing, interactive, and fun. The following comments illustrate why students liked the
CogLab assignments:
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“The best part was that the labs were fun and interesting. It was interesting to seehow my results came out.”