Joanne Kirtley's List: ARS

• Audience response systems are receiving increased attention as a tool to aid faculty members in engaging and increasing interactivity with students.
• Positive aspects of ARS use, as reported in published research, have included increased learning, interactivity, attendance, and enjoyment; potential drawbacks have included costs to students, technical issues, and decreased lecture coverage.^1,3
• An ARS also has been found useful for recording attendance, engaging students in lectures, and collecting anonymous feedback for presenters in a seminar course.⁷
• Studies by educators in other health professions have shown similar results. ARS usage has been linked to higher learning gains than traditional lectures, perceived as a beneficial learning tool, and identified as a potential tool for improving classroom attention of continuing medical education (CME) participants.^8-11
• How the technology is used is more important than the technology itself.
• Posing periodic questions via an ARS changes the typical lecture routine by shifting focus from the instructor and providing a brief break in content presentation, compelling students to interact with the material and provide formative feedback to both instructor and students.
• Decreased lecture coverage due to time needed to collect answers is one potential negative aspect of ARS use

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• However, didactic lectures demonstrate variable effectiveness as measured by short- and long-term factual recollection (2 T.E. Schackow, M. Chavez, L. Loya and M. Friedman, Audience response system: Effect on learning in family medicine residents, Fam Med 36 (2004), pp. 496–504. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (20)2)
• One key feature in effective medical lecturing is audience engagement
• An ARS provides learners with immediate and anonymous feedback regarding the accuracy of their responses (7). Audience members are able to compare their performance with that of the entire group (7). ARS lectures also allow the presenter to assess learning and reinforce key concepts as the audience responds anonymously in real-time (1 J.L. Streeter and F.J. Rybicki, A novel standard-compliant audience response system for medical education, Radiographics 26 (2006), pp. 1243–1249. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (1)1).
• n a randomized controlled trial, Miller et al. (7) found no increase in knowledge between ARS intervention and control groups when used in continuing medical education activities
• Our results also suggest that students gain greater insight into their own understanding of lecture material when using an ARS than when hearing the verbal responses of questions posed in lecture
• Students who had no prior experience with the Turning Point software were able to make and use ARS presentations with less than one hour of training
• There are several challenges to implementing the ARS lecture format into existing didactic lectures. Interspersing questions throughout a lecture lengthens the presentation, leaving less time for necessary didactics. In addition, asking too many ARS questions within one lecture may be distracting to the audience.
• uture studies may consider newer technologies that replace purchased keypads with the student’s own personal digital assistants (PDAs), which may cut down on the cost of implementing an ARS in the setting of a wireless classroom.

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• Detractors charge that PowerPoint inhibits presenter–audience interaction