Audience Response Systems are a great way to engage your audience whether in a room or at a remote location through online polling, quizzing and Q&A sessions. They allow you to entertain, engage and energize your audience successfully. If you are on the lookout for a fast, easy and safe way to increase your audience participation, it was never easier before the advancement of these AR systems.
AR systems place a secure, advanced and robust way of online polling and voting in everyone’s pocket. Whatever situation you are using these systems in, asking ‘show of hands’ is now eliminated. Whether you are using the system in a class or a meeting, whether virtually or face-to-face, now you can receive viewpoints immediately and accurately. Let’s know more about these systems.
An Introduction to AR Systems
AR systems use a combination of hardware and software to ask questions, record replies, and give feedback. There are two hardware components of the system, receivers and wireless clickers. Questions can be presented either through a special ARS software or PowerPoint. Questions can be of different types, including true or false, multiple choice, ordering, short answer, numeric, etc. The questions get displayed on the screen and the audience are asked to submit their responses with clicker in their hands.
Step by Step Instructions to Use AR Systems
If you are new to using Audience Response Systems and want guidance on how to use them, then here are the step by step instructions to use them:
- First, the presenter projects the presentation on a screen and describes it. Most of the AR systems support PowerPoint and can directly work with it, but some have their own ARS software that can run on slides.
- Thousands of audience members can access this presentation at a time. Each slide contains a question with multiple responses. The audience members can choose their answer and submit it to the presenter with the help of a wireless clicker they have in their hands.
- Audience have a limited period of time to submit their responses, after which they will not be able to send answer for the given slide. Once all the audience members have done their voting, the gathered data become visible on the screen with the help of graphics, graphs, numbers or statistics.
- The presenter can find out answers of each individual separately, but they can choose either to present it on the screen or keep it anonymous. Typically, an honest voting system should be anonymous and should not be in favor of any one particular viewpoint.
Applications of AR Systems
Presenters or surveyors can use an AR system to get unbiased votes on particular topics. However, if the presenter is using the system in a training camp or a classroom, then the instructor may collect responses for grading in tests and quizzes, or for taking attendance with a digital voting system. These systems can also be used in conferences and meetings for taking perspectives. Corporate trainers may also use them to train employees or take their standpoints.
Unlike asking the members to raise their hands and respond to questions, they can now use their wireless clickers to submit their answers. Some of their typical applications are:
- For delivering interactive questions
- Encouraging risk taking
- Allowing members to answer anonymously
- Gauging members’ level of understanding and viewpoints
- Generating discussions from the feedback received
- Instantly receiving reviews, perspectives and project details
- Taking attendance
- Collecting data
- Recording grades
Benefits of Using AR Systems
There are several benefits of using AR systems for classes, events, and conferences, where collection of data is to be done from a mass. Some of these benefits are:
- Quick and accurate gathering of data
- Fast feedback and results
- Boost in audience engagement
- Increase in audience attention in a classroom or towards a presentation
- Quick corrections and explanations made possible with real-time feedback
- Using gadgets becomes interesting
Adopted by thousands of universities and corporations across the globe, Audience Response Systems have established themselves as real-time audience engagement systems not only in classrooms, but in workplaces too. Make sure that the one you choose is simple to use and good in quality, so that every question that counts becomes unmissable.
